You're a baby-and-bathwater man, Ron old chap. Neither you nor I nor Carol (whom you clearly target in your post) can know what was on the committee's mind when they voted "yea" for Sir Salman. Nor can we know, leaks aside, what influences they were working under. You are operating the null hypothesis - fair enough, but in the light of what's happened over Iraq and Israel/Lebanon in recent years under the stewardship of the Bush/Blair axis you really will have to cut us conspiracy theorists a bit of slack when we question the honesty of what's going on. Right, the rotten honours system always awards automatic knighthoods to ageing big businessmen and politicians falling off their perches and we all have to put up with that rubbish, but as for the rest we can at least expect a bit of pandering to popular opinion. But not in the case of Sir Salman. Go out in the street and find one person who appreciates him. Such persons are as common as rocking-horse shit to be honest. He has as much popular appeal as the average stale dog-turd. So forgive us for asking what the hell's going on. None of which is to say he shouldn't be honoured, but the only people who seem to like him are the same types who'll tell you that Rach Three is actually better than the Rach Two the rest of us love to bits just to demonstrate their "superior" knowledge (they'll put up with any amount of pain to show you how clever they are, including listening repeatedly to Rach Three just to convince themselves).   We smell a rat, Ron. Evidence, the call for which is your mantra, we have none, but saying that we suspect an element of Muslim-baiting is a lot less ridiculous than saying there's a God or the moon is made of green cheese when you think about it. Admit it. His bestowed knighthood, even in the context of our capricious honours setup, is odd in the extreme. Ask not for evidence, that what you will not get (we're talking big-time establishment here don't forget), but rather ask what's really going on.