""I agree that some of Cromwell's more extreme followers may not have liked music and dancing, but The Dancing Master would not have required three editions during the Commonwealth if dancing had been totally suppressed or at best it would have circulated as a clandestine publication rather than being on open sale.""

Doesn't that equate to what I was saying, and rather neatly help to make my point.

It wasn't the religious who went around killing anyone who sang, danced, or displayed a little joie de vivre, it was the fundamentalists who chose the most extreme interpretation of Christ's message, and espoused the most Draconian of punishments, then, as fundamentalists always do, completly misunderstood the point of his teachings.

Ollie, bless his political little heart, merely supplied them with the environment and gave them the authority, both of which they used to the fullest extent.

Bottom line is, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether you are in Baghdad, Teheran, Delhi, Tel Aviv, or the American Bible Belt. The fundamentalists will be there with their hateful attitude to anybody who doesn't comply with their criteria.

So bash the bloody fundies by all means, but don't conflate religion itself with repression. Read the Q'ran, the Bible and the Torah (Talmud?), and what is immediately obvious, is the fact that most fundies have vastly misinterpreted almost everything they "know" about what it says.

Don T.