As Professor Paul Krugman reminds us: “Donald Trump has taken us to war with the nation that was at the epicentre of the 1979 oil crisis. Almost everyone assumes that the economic fallout from Operation Masculine Insecurity Epic Fury will be much less severe than the fallout from the rise of the mullahs nearly fifty years ago. And they’re probably — probably — right.” His analysis of the economic factors shows that we are in a more favourable position this time, mainly because we are all now less reliant on oil. Obviously those ‘windmills’ are actually quite useful. So then whilst still uncertain, there is not the same risk of petrol rationing again.

What I wanted to look at, however, is where certainty takes us. Certainty is a strange emotion. It tells us that we are right about what we perceive and what we think even when (almost always) we cannot actually be sure. For some time now, there has been a debate about whether or not we are part of a computer simulation. This would mean that our lives were being controlled by a highly intelligent being somewhere in the universe (or perhaps by a spotty adolescent in his bedroom) with the power to interfere with our supposed memories and perceptions. It’s a conundrum which is incapable of solution but plays nicely with the idea of certainty.

And then we’ve spent colossal amounts of time and money testing the apparent certainties of Einstein’s equations and so far have not found any anomalies – except for the glaring omission that they do not work at the quantum level. And so work continues to try to find a new theory which could span the great divide, but nonetheless not give us certainty as to how the universe works.

It is where opinion is based on, well, very little, that, perversely, certainties seem to increase. I have the feeling (although I’m far from certain) that certainty may even increase in inverse proportion to the evidence for its justification: I’ll save Christianity for another day. And so we come back to Iran.

It is a Muslim state, but one of the Shia persuasion, rather than espousing the Sunni interpretation of Mohammed’s teachings. I don’t know the difference in any detail, but remember that it had something to do with which relatives of Mohammed were his true spiritual successors. As he died in the 7th century, no-one can say with any certainty what his last wishes were. But both sides are convinced that they are right.

The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenie, although like manna to the less fervent people of Iran, has produced an outpouring of grief across the Shia world. It turns out that the Ayatollah was for ardent Shiites the equivalent of the Pope, with the same reputation for infallibility. And so for them, total certainty reigns, even though the difference between Sunni and Shia is as clear to an outsider as that between ‘The Judean People’s Front’ and ‘The People’s Front of Judea’ in the Life of Brian.

There are whole nations, or at least their leaders, who will not consider living with uncertainty. They will not tolerate those with whom they disagree, whether other countries or their own citizens.

The Syrian conflict is rooted in this and Iraq is divided between the two ideologies. Having set up numerous proxy groups, Iran was the leader in the spread of Islamic terrorism across the globe.

And in January the Great Leader of Iran was guilty of the mass murder of probably more than thirty thousand of his citizens because they wanted a democracy instead of a theocracy which enforced the most restrictive interpretation of Islam. Which makes it all the more strange that various leading academics have aligned themselves with the aims of that faith, mainly of course as supporters of the antizionist movement.

This, as I was reading the other day, included members of the French post-1968 intelligentsia, including the intellectual, Michel Foucault, who felt a sort of ecstasy when he contemplated Ayatollah Khomenei, without, as an outspoken supporter of the homosexual cause, considering the dichotomy between his views and those of militant Islam. He did not consider the fate of those ‘corrupters of the earth’, condemned to death by the regime for sodomy. During a recent visit to France, the high priestess of woke culture (including ‘decolonisation’), American academic Judith Butler, who is also Jewish and a gay rights activist, legitimised 7 October as an ‘act of resistance’. it was obviously better for her to make such a statement on ‘colonial’ French territory though than in the Gaza Strip under the rule of Yahya Sinwar, where the fate of homosexuals was that they were systematically put to death.

We have discussed wokeism before: a type of secular morality which insists upon the truth of the (constantly changing) ‘certainties’ held by its proponents, and so very much like the religious version of morality. Both are codes of behaviour which change as time moves on, based on what becomes broadly acceptable and unacceptable in society. As we say, “the past is a different country”.

Apparently though we now we have a Crown Prosecution Service so afraid of upsetting Islam that it wishes to bring back the offence of blasphemy, abolished by Parliament in England and Wales in 2008, but not yet in Northern Ireland.

Hamit Coskun is a Turkish-born atheist and asylum seeker. Last year he was convicted in the magistrates’ court of using abusive words or behaviour within the sight of a person ‘likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress’. He had set fire to a copy of the Quran while shouting ‘Fuck Islam’ outside the Turkish consulate in London. Two Muslim members of the public attacked him.

His conviction was overturned by the Crown Court and then the DPP appealed against that decision. They tried to argue that you cannot burn any book in central London without committing that offence and, if done outside an embassy or consulate, it only makes it worse. This obviously completely eviscerates any idea of protest. If you are trying to protest against the policies of a foreign government in London, you go to their embassy - even if the government it represents is Islamic. And then to make it worse, the DPP also argued that being physically attacked by people holding the opposite view merely confirms that you have caused them harassment, alarm or distress. The Court of Appeal was having none of such woke certainties.

So where does this all leave us? Critical thinking depends on initial doubt. It should also recognise that conclusions drawn from that thinking are likely to be provisional rather than final. All we can normally assess are probabilities. That the sun will rise tomorrow seems to be nailed on, but whether I will see it is in the lap of the gods – and Donald Trump.

That I perceive the colour of grass as being what I call green is by definition correct when I say it, but I can have no certainty as to how I will see it tomorrow or what others see when they look at grass and call it green. Those who are red/green colour blind probably see grass as being what I would think of as beige. But by common consent most of us say that grass is green.

When though it comes to political theories, there are lots of very firmly held, mutually contradictory, opinions and rarely any evidence that one works better than another in producing a benefit to the people. And there is also always debate as to which people should benefit - and for what - and which people should pay for the provision of that benefit. All of these questions are matters of opinion.

We have the impression that people are mostly certain of their opinions – although I am not. At least at the edge, I can usually see reasons to think otherwise. And as we get older, and have more experience of how the world works, we tend to change our opinions. And so my opinions are often in a state of either flux or suspended animation. Maybe it’s the lawyer in me, still saying to my imaginary clients: “on the one hand... but on the other hand...”

Paul Buckingham

3 March 2026