With Osama Bin Laden dead, the position of figurehead for the global Al Qaeda franchise is vacant. I would like to put myself forward to fill this important role. It is true that I do not believe in Allah, have never handled a Kalashnikov, and, indeed, have in the past scribbled a blasphemous cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed (see here and below). No doubt these things will count against me in the initial round of interviews, which I understand will be taking place in some remote mountain fastness in the coming days. But I have every confidence that I will be able to win over the wild-eyed nutters and gun-toting beardy persons with my unique vision of the role. What Al Qaeda desperately needs, I will argue, is an injection of woolly Church of England-style cardigan-wearing niceness. Instead of all that chanting and suicide bombing and beheading, I see the waging of jihad as a matter of cups of tea and arrowroot biscuits and seed cake, with a spot of choral evensong and a sermon. And instead of all that shouty sermonising packed with threats against Jews and infidels, the sermons under my dispensation will be abstruse and windy, full of qualifying phrases and equivocation. This is the way forward, or backwards, or even sideways, for all these directions are of course equally valid in the eyes of Allah, who we should think of as a sort of benign uncle with an unruly beard and fantastic hairy eyebrows, not unlike the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Blasphemous portrayal of the “Prophet” Mohammed