All these slurs where demonstrably false, and in the event, Nazir-Ali's enemies needn't have worried; their favoured candidate, Rowan Williams was chosen by Tony Blair to succeed George Carey as head of the world-wide Anglican Communion.

A few months ago Nazir-Ali gave an indication of just how different his style would have been to that of the emollient Dr Williams when he travelled to Ohio to warn American Anglicans they had gone too far in the liberal direction. "The right choice is in line with the Bible and the Church's teaching down the ages, not some new fangled religion invented to respond to the 21st century".

Last week I met Michael Nazir-Ali in the gilded splendour of Parliament's Upper House. As one of the Lords Spiritual, Nazir-Ali had just finished his duty day of leading the peers in prayer before the start of legislative proceedings. In such circumstances I could not avoid asking him whether this impressive display of the Church of England's constitutional role gave a greatly exaggerated sense of the real influence of the established Church, which had become a very shaky edifice. Nazir-Ali's answer - like all his answers- came instantly, eloquently, and in sonorous preacher's tones.

"Yes I think our edifice is shaky and we have to be honest and admit that. I have always defended the establishment of the Church of England, but I have come to the view that the question now is not that of defending the place of this Church, but the very basis on which this nation was founded.

"Almost everything you touch in British culture, whether it's art, literature or the language itself has been shaped by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, by the Bible, by the church's worship and belief. But this whole idea of a multi-faith society. Well, if you mean just that there are people of different faiths in Britain, that's one thing, that's obvious. But if you go on to say that this means there is such a thing as undiffererntiated faith, which somehow must be provided for - that's a completely different matter. I think we are now moving from one to the other and there are all sorts of dangers in this.

Given that Prince Charles had declared he wants to be crowned as a 'defender of faith' rather than just Defender of the Faith, namely the established Church, wasn't the heir to the throne an example of the post-modern belief in vague mysticism - exactly what Nazir-Ali condemns as 'undifferentiated faith'.

'For the record, all my contact with the Prince of Wales has suggested that he's fairly orthodox in his Christian belief, although he has these other interests that you describe. But the Coronation service is singularly Christian in its form. The Monarch takes the oath when he's given the ring, to defend the Catholic faith, by which is meant the faith of the Church down the ages. And, indeed he is anointed. It's a deeply Christian service and I don't think anyone who goes through that would be left in any doubt about what is being asked of him. Whatsoever.

So I hope that when is asked to be Defender of the Faith, he is quite clear what that means. It means the historic faith of our church. There's no sort of undifferentiated something-or-other called 'Faith'. As you say, it's a post-Modern invention. One might even call it a conceit. And you can't defend something that does not exist. Also you can't be a defender of all faiths. You can defend them, I suppose in the sense that you defend people's right to believe what they like, and that's fine. But you can't defend the doctrine of each and every faith, because they contradict one another. Buddhists, for example, don't believe in God at all."

A couple of weeks ago it was reported that the Prince's advisers had been drawing up plans for some sort of 'multi-faith' Coronation, to follow the established one. What does Nazir-Ali think? "If people of various faiths want to bring their good wishes and loyal addresses to the new Monarch, there can be such an event after the Coronation. But not in Westminster Abbey and it should not be a multi-faith service."

It's clear that Bishop Nazir-Ali despite the fact that he holds joint Pakistani and British nationality is not a fan of the modern British version of 'multi-culturalism'. When I asked him if he thought this doctrine had been a mistake, he nodded his head vigorously.

'Yes I think it was a mistake. It was based on a confusion between civic morality and theological pluralism. Of course we have to recognise difference; of course people have the right to worship in the way they wish to in their own homes.

But you need much more than that if you are going to be a cohesive nation. You need some sort of subscription to a common vision, to shared values, and that has been neglected, not so much because of the presence of other faiths but because of the spiritual and moral vacuum that has come to be at the heart of British society.

I think a lot of people who would not class themselves as Christians would share Nazir-Ali's view that there is a spiritual vacuum and lack of moral confidence at the heart of our society. But how has it taken hold?

"Well, there are a number of things aren't there? Good people get co-opted, even unknowingly. I think some of it has to do with English pragmatism: let's get the job done and let's not think too much about metaphysical questions. Some of it has to do with the disproportionate influence of secular morality, especially since the Sixties. Political correctness as it developed, multiculturalism in that sense, is certainly a contributory factor."

Suddenly Nazir-Ali shows a rare flash of irritation, mentioning Local Government Minister Ruth Kelly's latest attempt to bridge the divides created by multiculturalism, her Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

'The Christian churches are not represented on it. It is astonishing in a country shaped by the Judaeo-Christian tradition to have a commission on integration and cohesion without the churches having any representation at all.

"The point is, we will never get any kind of properly cohesive view of society in this country which is not formed by the Christian tradition."

One would think that Ruth Kelly, a practicing Roman Catholic would appreciate Nazir-Ali's point. But although he has already raised this matter, he has he tells me had no response.

What about Gordon Brown? Hasn't he attempted to set out a vision of 'Britishness' that does not have a distinctly Christian element? Is that doomed to failure as well?

"What is Britishness?" asked Nazir-Ali. "Is it good behaviour? Is it some kind of proper accent? What is it? If you break it down, and if it comes to anything worth noticing, it will turn out to be values derived from Christianity."

The peculiar clarity and passion with which Michael Nazir-Ali views Britain's moral decline perhaps derives from the fact that he admired this country and its institutions from afar before coming to live here.

He was born in Karachi 57 years ago. He attended a Roman Catholic school, but was received into the Anglican Church of Pakistan when he was 20. At the age of 27 he was ordained as an Anglican priest and became the Bishop of Raiwind in West Punjab when he was 35, the youngest bishop in the entire Anglican Communion.

I asked him to tell me something about his family background which is probably richer and more diverse than that of any of the Anglican liberal clergy in this country who so dislike his views.

"I come from a Muslim background. My father was a practicing Christian but the rest of my family were Muslim. My father never really understood the differences between Christian denominations because he came from a Muslim background himself, so although he was baptised in an Anglican Church he became a Roman Catholic.

"I think I decided to become a member of the Anglican Church because it provided a way of belonging to the historic Christian faith without what then seemed to me the authoritarian structure of the Roman Catholic Church."

Things became very difficult for the young Bishop Nazir-Ali in the Pakistan of the late Eighties.

"This was a time when there was a great movement towards Islamicisation in Pakistan. As Christians we had to say there were certain penal laws, partly concerning the role of women in society, which we could not support. I was also engaged with working with very poor people, bonded labour, and all of that made me unpopular in certain circles, and there were threats of various kinds, which I didn't mind; there are was also physical manhandling. Again you learn to live with that.

"But then we began to receive threats about the children, and our two boys were very young at the time. Then Robert Runcie, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, asked me to help him to prepare for the 1988 Lambeth Conference. He told me: come to England to do that, it will ease the situation."

I said to Nazir-Ali that it must appear very strange, having come to this country to avoid threats from Pakistan's Islamic fundamentalists, that now his safe haven is also experiencing problems with people of similar views, many of them from families of Pakistani origin .

"When I was first in Britain as a theology student in the early Seventies, the kind of Islam that existed here was pietistic, Sufi orientated. When I came back in the late Eighties, it had changed. The mosques had recruited people from fundamentalist backgrounds.

"On the face of it the mosque schools were used for teaching Arabic, the Koran and so forth, but they were also used for dangerous indoctrination, as we have now discovered. So the whole scenery has changed within a dozen years. It causes me great concern for the sake of the Muslim community as well as for the country as a whole.

"I think the real issue with Islam today - and I would stress that I have a large number of Muslim friends and relatives with whom I get on very well indeed, and for which I am deeply thankful - is that we are dealing with not just a faith, but with a well defined ideology. I don't want to make a comparison with revolutionary Marxism, but that's the kind of ball game you're in. No other faith is like this.

"There are chauvinist manifestations in every faith. I was there in Bosnia during the conflict there, so I have seen it in its Christian form. But you don't get, outside Islam, this kind of very well defined ideology with well defined social, political and economic aims. That's the sort of thing we're dealing with and its vital that our democracy recovers its spiritual and moral basis, otherwise it will not be able to resist this ideology."

Was Nazir-Ali saying that we as a country are too morally weak to face down Islamic fundamentalism?

"Well we might be. But the problem is our own moral vacuum. Whatever the Government tries to do about it will not be successful unless there is some clear reclaiming of the moral and spiritual tradition which created this country."

I suggested to the Bishop that one reason why Christianity had found it difficult to handle Islam is that while the Christian faith is based on a man who never lifted a sword, Mohammed while also a great preacher was a warrior.

"You have identified a basic issue. The Christian faith is about recouncing the will to power and finding other ways of achieving human well being, whereas in Islam there is an affirmation of the will to power, and how to use it to affirm the aims of the faith.

"The Al-Qaeda programme is explicitly to recover the lands that were lost from Islam. It includes the Balkans, India, the Far East, most of the Iberian Peninsula, the Holy Land."

But surely it is not feasible that militant Islam could reassert its control over all those territories?

"Whether it is feasible or not, that is the agenda." Said Nazir-Ali. "And if there is a moral vacuum, such as we have, then something sooner or later will fill it. And what fills it may not be at all desirable - or expected.

END