The lecture had been booked for months, the publicity had been done and video-filming arranged for the venue. Cancelling the booking at this short notice, two days before the event, left organisers with very little time to find a new venue, meaning the public lecture could not go ahead at all.

The call came on a Sunday afternoon in early 2015. I had conducted an Anglican service in the morning and we had lunch and were relaxing in our house in La Marina near Torrevieja. We had lived in Spain for four years and life was relatively peaceful. My ministry allowed me to conduct services most Sundays, funerals and wedding blessings. And not least pastoral ministry. Peaceful though. When the call to start a Retreat came, I realised our lives were about to change big style.

The "spiritual impact" of the abuse was "particularly damaging" to survivors "particularly where their religion provided the foundation to their morality, beliefs, social relationships and the way they lived their daily lives," the report stated.

"Loss of religious faith" was "notable" among the victims and recovery was complicated for many "because they had been abused by religious individuals and, subsequently, their belief systems had been challenged," it added.

The Umma can return to its quotidian life founded on the myth that Muslims are "the best of all peoples," as the Qur'an repeatedly affirms. The taboo status of apostasy is a psychological necessity because, "Taboo protects the local consensus on how the world is organised. It shores up wavering certainty."[2] But execution and exile are not the only ways of containing the pollution of apostasy: there is also the option of enjoining silence.