Dispatches: Unholy War

Channel 4 have just screened an edition of their Dispatches documentary series investigating threats made against muslim converts to Christianity in the UK. More information is available on their Dispatches web site and, at the time of writing, the show is available for Windows users to watch online through their 4OD service.

There were several issues raised by this programme which I believe need an urgent and prayerful response. I’m not yet sure what that response should be in every case, so I’ll leave it to your discretion; but do please share any thoughts below or on the I promise to pray for the city of Bradford every day Facebook group.

• Firstly, the main narrative of the show followed a Bradford family who converted to Christianity and faced five years of harassment, death threats and destruction of property before finally being forced to move away from the city. The family’s church in Manningham, which was shown but not named, had also suffered intimidation and vandalism as a result. According to the show, there are 3000 former Muslims in the UK who face such persecution.
• Secondly, the show made pointed references to the problem of bogus asylum seekers seeking to bolster their case by claiming a fraudulent conversion to Christianity.
• The middle third of show was given over to highlighting the dangers of American Evangelicals who come over to the UK and stir up trouble by deliberately targeting children, divorced women and other vulnerable Muslims for evangelisation. Chief among their organisations of concern was a group called Caleb, who’s UK base is in Bradford. The fact that Caleb Project Europe ceased to be two years ago seemed only to deepen the presenter’s suspicion, particularly given that several of the old Caleb team remained in the UK, working independently and continuing to rent the same office space. Caleb’s operations in Bradford were portrayed as shadowy and somewhat sinister. The presenter managed to elicit a condemnation from the Bishop of Rochester, who’d never heard of Caleb. No mention was made of whether they’d attempted to contact the Bishop of Bradford, or any of the many other reputable groups with whom Caleb have partnered.
• Finally—and this wasn’t mentioned in the documentary—there is another, entirely unrelated, Christian project in Bradford that goes by the name of Caleb, who run addiction recovery programmes. There’s a lot of potential for confusion here.

Find her. Save her.

A few years ago I played through Bioware’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It won stacks of awards, and was undeniably one of the best games of 2003. It was also the first time I’d played a proper RPG. The concept of levelling a character was entirely alien to me, and I didn’t do a very good job of it. By the time I reached the grand finale I’d spread my experience points so thinly that defeating the final boss was nigh on impossible.

The inventory, storytelling and character interaction, though, were familiar gameplay elements, reminiscent of the classic adventure games of my youth; Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango etc. I installed a copy of ScummVM and, through the likes of Adventure Gamers and Just Adventure, discovered that the adventure genre wasn’t nearly as dead as I’d been led to believe. I downloaded demos of The Longest Journey and Syberia. I scoured the shops in a vain effort to find these fabled saviours of narrative gaming. I discovered that the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police wasn’t the death knell I’d thought—that the exiles of LucasArts had gone their separate ways and founded many exciting new companies. I subscribed to Ragnar Tornquist’s blog. And then I got rid of my computer.

Last night, after years of anticipation, as the proud (and only slightly smug) owner of a shiny new MacBook Pro with a specially created Windows Vista Ultimate partition, I completed Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. It’s one of the best games I’ve played, and easily deserves to be listed alongside the greats mentioned above. I could give a list as long as you’d like of things that could be improved with the game, but none of them detract from the fact that it showcases some finest writing ever seen in a game, and for that alone you should play it.

Basically this whole post is a rather longwinded way of saying that you should buy this game. Now. It’s only a tenner off Steam. Go on. Find her, save her.