dearie me - is everything balancing out again?

Tedious fundamentalism has had a dream run in recent years, in the west too - medieval christianity has been repeatedly rebadged, whether as born-againism, creationism, or the brilliantly-named intelligent design, now mandatory in the U.S. school curriculum.

And christian god-botherers have had a stranglehold on the abortion agenda.

So I was relieved when the Americans booted their born-again numbskull out of office. Could the pendulum finally be swinging back toward the rational? And with all the books and broadcasts about Darwin in his anniversary year, it was looking as if we could expect a return to enlightened thinking.

But then I listened last night to a BBC world broadcast, in the "World Have Your Say" phone-in series. I'm going to download the podcast and pass it on to Cap'n Kev. He'll go ballistic. The programme started by discussing Sarah Palin's 18-year-old daughter becoming a mother, and then considered the disappearance of the concept of chastity in the West.

An articulate young woman caller from the Middle East rang in to explain the superiority of the Islamic practice of staying a virgin until marriage. The polite BBC woman asked her about the downside - the sewing-up of broken hymens before the wedding. But the caller explained that she had only ever met one person who had the sewing-up, so it doesn't really happen. I was wishing Hirsi Ali would phone up.

The caller explained another thing that the West could learn - if you marry young, then you don't have time to be promiscuous.

I could say more, but I don't need a fatwa, especially as I've already got my very own psychostalker.

But has the West finally run out of ideas? Has it finally come to this, where we have to turn in desperation to god (and somebody else's god at that) for a solution to problems we brought on ourselves?

To be fair, there is one area where this approach is looking hopeful. The morally and financially bankrupt capitalist markets are so lost for ideas that they're looking to the East. And it seems that traditional Islamic banking may indeed have a lot to teach the West. One of the nice things about Sharia lending is the complete transparency that is required. And because the charging of interest is forbidden, there is no possibility of the highly leveraged derivatives that exposed so many institutions to minor interest rate variations.

Obviously I stole the last phrase from someone else, but I think this is a civilised idea. Lend people money without charging interest. If they use the money to make a capital gain, they have to pay you a share of the gain. If they don't make anything, they only owe you the original amount of the loan.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has been studying Islamic banking. But Tarek Fatah, who founded a progressive Muslim group in Canada said in an interview he was “shocked” to learn that “a Crown corporation is using taxpayers’ money” for faith-based banking. He calls sharia banking “the biggest con job ever. What are we going to have next, Buddhist banking?” he asked. I'm still trying to work out what his agenda is. Is everything balancing out?