Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

Gul Wazir and his wife, Niaz Begum were gunned down while eating breakfast - a so called "honour" killing. I just want to make it very clear, this is not a good thing at all. Anyone who is listening and thinks this is a good thing, I have to tell you it is not. You are wrong. It is a bad thing, a very bad thing indeed.

Now, some people think this is to do with religion. While the Islamic religion does indeed cherish essential human virtues, like honour, it remains the religion of peace and general niceness, and logically therefore cannot condone honour killings. As Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that those who say this is connected with Islam are mistaken. Real Islam, proper Islam, my Islam, does not enforce honour killings, or wearing the hijab or the burka or any of that sort of stuff. Too many countries seem to completely misinterpret Islam in this respect.

Honour killings are, in fact, a cultural thing, where a man's honour is tarnished by a woman who refuses to do what he tells him to. Then, for the honour of his family or tribe, he feels there is simply no alternative but to kill her.

Anyway, Happy Ramadan everyone! And remember, all you big, butch, honourable men out there, please do try not to kill any women during the holy month. Remember, Islam is a religion of compassion.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Plans are afoot to revive the ancient Nalanda University, a seat of Buddhist learning from the 5th to the 12th centuries. Seeking knowledge for its own sake is a religious imperative in Islam. Unfortunately this wasn't known to the Muslim general Bakhtiyar Khilji who sacked Nalanda.

Academics, like myself, really wish to be left alone to get on with the pursuit of knowledge. In my case learning more and more about Islam, conducting vital new research in as yet uncharted areas of Islamic theology. However we're constantly being distracted by the need for money. Ideally, you would just give us the money. But no, we have to attract students, hit educational attainment targets and above all, get lots of lovely foreign students, with all their lovely, lovely fees.

Oh how I wish I could simply spend my time pondering great thoughts, instead of all this drudgery of marking exams, trying to drum up funding, drawing up staff performance evaluations and doing Thought For The Day.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

My father used to tell me stories of the British Raj. Muslims and Hindus, who until then had gotten along splendidly, were set against each other by the British, thus heralding the tragedy of The Partition of India. One can understand the logic, after all partition had worked so well in Ireland and would have similar success in Palestine. Of course, the British occupation of India wasn't all bad: we built the railways.

This week David Cameron was asked if he would return the Koh-i-Noor diamond. This is the large twinkly bauble that the Queen gets to wear 'cos she's the Queen, the jewel in the British crown. The Prime Minister, taken aback, quite rightly said no. If we gave back all the treasures that we'd pillaged from around the world then the British Museum would be empty.

To find out what we should do with the diamond, I refer you to the Koran. Several of the nice bits in the Koran emphasise forgiveness and healing broken ties. In that spirit India should forgive Britain and let us keep the diamond.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Forget about the World Cup, the oil spillage, Bloody Sunday and spending cuts. The really big news is that my son was stopped and questioned at Luton airport last week. What made it worse was the officer trying to relieve the tension with a smile and a joke. It was only when another police officer realised my son was with me that he was allowed to continue.

We muslims are renowned for our relaxed and easy going attitude, so why on earth would they pick on us? I wasn't even dressed like a Muslim, so how did they know we were Muslims? This kind of thing really makes me angry. Now I haven't got a chip on my shoulder, but stopping Muslims is just being racist. In reality they should be stopping everyone except Muslims. Do you want we Muslims to feel alienated? 'Cos trust me, you won't like us when we feel alienated. This is precisely the kind of unthinking discrimination against decent, hard working professors and their families that causes a breakdown in trust.

Obviously security has to be tight at airports so that me and my son can fly safely, but random checks on passengers shouldn't be made on respectable people like us. It's an outrage that security checks should apply to me our any of my relatives. They should be targeting all those little old white ladies who are always causing trouble, with their elasticated stockings and mobility scooters. And when these other people get stopped by security checks they should bear the delay with patience and fortitude. I'll bet they never, ever stop little old white ladies - the fascists.

As the Koran wisely says, "You have been made as different nations and tribes, so I can have a good laugh when you fail to get along."

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

The first abortion advert will appear on TV on Monday. Packaged like a new breakfast cereal or washing up liquid, the Mary Stopes Clinic will be introducing their "buy one, get one free" abortion offer.

Abortion is a complex moral issue. No, honestly, it is! So rather than discuss this I'd like to concentrate on advertising instead. You get adverts for everything these days: breakfast cereals, washing up liquid, DVDs, electrical gadgets, sofas, clothes, wine, abortions. This isn't really going anywhere, is it? Let's broaden the subject again.

The media - they do like to show things don't they? And we can either be interested or not interested. It's a bit like religion, isn't it? They have so much in common, such as church bells and calls to prayer from the minaret.

So, in summary, as Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that those of us with an Invisible Magic Friend have meaning in our lives. The rest of you don't. So there.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

My son nearly had a fight at school the other day. My attempts to console him failed to remove the feeling that he had been wronged.

It's a bit like what's going on in Jerusalem when you think about it. Elie Wiesel wrote an impassioned letter to President Obama, begging him not to stop Jewish settlers from evicting Palestinians from their homes. The Invisible Magic Friend gave Jerusalem to them 5,000 years ago. It says so in Jewish scripture, so it must be true. Hundreds of Jewish residents wrote back to disagree.

I'm not going to take one side or the other on the topic of the Middle East peace process. Do you really think I'd be daft enough to take a public position on such a divisive issue? No, what the people of Jerusalem need is justice. To do that, we need to face up to the issues, which I'm not going to do. We need to clearly recognise who is suffering injustice, which again I'm not going to do. We need to put a clear plan in place about how to settle their difficulties, which I'm definitely not going to do. We can't just walk away and pretend that there are no specific problems to be solved, which I am going to do.

The Invisible Magic Friend is a big fan of justice. It says so in the Koran, so it must be true. If it hadn't told us in the Koran then we'd probably never have realised what a good idea justice was. We'd just wander around not having any justice, so it's a good job the Invisible Magic Friend pointed out just what a good thing justice was!

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Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

There's been another terrible natural disaster, this time in China. As we watch the heart-rending images of the dead and suffering, some will ask where will we get the clothes, blankets and tents to protect the survivors? How will we secure fresh water and food supplies? Are the roads in a good enough state to allow search and rescue and medical teams access? But I want to ask the academically fascinating and far more pressing question, "Why did the Invisible Magic Friend do this to them?"

It is a question that has been asked by philosophers, theologians and highly trained Islamic scholars for thousands of years. Some say there is a contradiction here between the seemingly random infliction of pain and death and the fact that the Invisible Magic Friend is the friendliest friend that ever there was.

Of course, in these enlightened times, we know that earthquakes are caused by the shifting of tectonic plates and that the exact timing of these shifts is currently unpredictable. This just goes to show how rubbish science is and how comforting religion and the Invisible Magic Friend can be for the helpless and the desperate, especially in largely atheist China.

So the question now becomes, why did the Invisible Magic Friend put us on a planet with tectonic plates? Does he get some sort of a kick out of watching all the misery that it causes? No, of course not. The Invisible Magic Friend is a great big warm cuddly, fluffy friend who would never hurt a fly. Take it from me, I'm Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, so I should know. The reason is really quite simple and I'm surprised no one has mentioned it before. The reason he causes all this suffering and injustice is so that we, the people who are unaffected, can feel sorrow and pity for the victims.

Awwwww, wasn't that nice of him!

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

What are we going to do with all our criminals? It's costing us all a great deal of money and re-offending rates are ridiculous. Many of these people come from broken homes, have drug or alcohol problems. They're often jobless or homeless. We have a duty to try and help them. Somebody urgently needs to do something.

What does the Invisible Magic Friend suggest? Well, I think you'll all agree, chopping off thieves' hands is a pretty good way of stopping them re-offending. As Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that if they do re-offend then they won't be able to do naughty things in their cells any more. Alcohol addiction can be tackled by banning alcohol and flogging anyone caught selling or consuming it. A good flogging for unpermitted sex should also reduce the number of broken homes and of course, execution for murderers and more serious sexual offences will definitely bring re-offending rates down.

It's all for their own good you know, they'll thank me in the end.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

The Copenhagen Summit is a big deal. I mean it's really big. You just won't believe how mind bogglingly, humungously, stupefyingly big it is. In terms of bigness, it's right up there with the Apollo 8 pictures of Earthrise over the moon. It's at times like these, confronted by something really, really, really BIG, when humanity faces a common threat, when we are drawn together by a common goal, that some of us remain sceptical and others just can't be bothered.

When the Invisible Magic Friend was looking for someone to put in charge of creation, he first asked the mountains. Due to their lack of neurons and generally high degree of being inanimate, they were rather slow to respond, but mankind jumped up and down with its collective hand in the air shouting "Me, me, Me, ME, ME!" So the Invisible Magic Friend said, "Alright, you can be in charge of the universe then, but don't trash it." As Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that this is why we must pray to the Invisible Magic Friend to make our leaders agree in Copenhagen, because we were second choice after some lumps of rock to look after the planet.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Many Muslims will be returning from their pilgrimage to Mecca (which you're not allowed to visit) spiritually renewed. They will have heard the inspiring sounds of the call to prayer from the Kaba Mosque (which you're not allowed to hear). "The Invisible Magic Friend is Great and really needs you to come and worship Him!" It is a beautiful, unthreatening sound. That's why it comes as such a shock to find that the Swiss have voted to ban them. If only the Swiss were a bit more open minded, like the government of Saudi Arabia.

Islam and Christianity, of which I'm sure most of you are one or the other, have had their little friendly rivalries in the past, but on the whole they've mostly got on rather well. This minaret ban is a bit of a setback - the result of fear and stereotyping of those who are a different religion from you. As a member of a religion that is currently in the minority, I'd like to plead for a bit more religious toleration.

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