As a relief from the demonising of niqabs and mosques, from the exceptional publicity given to the Al-Madinah school compared with non-Muslim academy schools also in special measures, and from Islamophobia generally, I take you back, gentle reader, to a time when, at least sometimes, multiculturalism was managed better. W. A. Meeks[1] writes of a time and place when a particular minority’s rights within the community were under threat. They protested to the local magistrates and council. The city authorities responded by declaring that the rights of those citizens should be maintained. They had, said the city council, the right to

“‘come together and have a communal life and adjudicate [their affairs and controversies] among themselves, and that a place be given them in which they may gather together with their wives and children and offer their ancestral prayers and sacrifices to God …’ The magistrates are to set aside a place ‘for them to build and inhabit’, and the market officials are to make provision for ‘suitable food’ to be available for [them].”

The time? 49 BC. The place? Sardis, in the Roman province of Asia. The minority? The Jewish community. Meeks continues:

“The subsequent history of the Jews in Sardis was apparently extraordinarily happy. In the second or early third century they were given for their ‘place’ a remodelled basilica, of huge size and elegant decoration, part of the monumental Roman gymnasium complex on the main street of the city, which they kept until the city itself was destroyed, long after the [Roman] empire had become officially Christian.”

Those were the days.