When asked to explain the significance of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai is reported to have replied that it was too soon to say - even though he was speaking some two hundreds years after the event!

Now Zhou En-lai may, or may not have had a point, but that did not stop Harvard historian Simon Schama devoting his considerable energies to the subject. And I am so glad that he did because in so doing he produced one of my most treasured books: ‘Citizens.’

And in his superb study Schama goes out of his way to stress that historians have often concentrated on economic ‘causes’ and in so doing failed to appreciate the crucial role people play in shaping the course of history, especially when they are powerful public speakers. As far as Schama is concerned, it’s a truth that we ignore to our cost.

Award-winning journalist Andrew Norfolk said something similar in an interview he gave a few months ago. “If you’d ever thought it was permissible to get by without understanding religion,” he said “that just didn’t work anymore.”

Sadly, he continued “religion today is not something about which people are so much embarrassed as ignorant and increasingly so - ‘even of Christianity.”

Norfolk writes for The Times and was recognised as Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards in 2014. His focus on religion began after the London bombings of 2005 when his editor invited him to spend six months studying Islam because he had no one with any expertise on his staff. This led to some outstanding investigative pieces that uncovered extremist teaching, as well as the grooming of teenage white girls by Asian men, something the local council and police were choosing to ignore.

“To be a journalist in this country, you need to understand politics, not just the difference between Conservative, Labour and Lib-Dem,” he said. “You need to understand within each of those parties the divergence of belief, and how that impacts on what policies they want to enact.”

But as for religion, he continued, “we’re still a million miles from that, from understanding how millions of people in this country live and are motivated to act. You cannot do that without understanding all the nuances and all the grey areas, all the blacks and all the whites, where those beliefs come from and why.”

We need to take Norfolk’s advice seriously in the current febrile climate because it can stop us falling into one of two traps when it comes to Islamic radicalism. Some people tend to see a terrorist behind ever Quran and end up suspecting all Muslims (as Donald Trump once seemed to!). Others prefer to shy away from the awkward truth that radicalised terrorists (of many persuasions) can be motivated by deeply held religious convictions.

Muslims, like Christians interpret their sacred texts differently. As one Islamic expert says: “Stereotyping the world of Islam is a fruitless task; such is its internal diversity. (Prof Peter G Riddell)

Norfolk is right. We need to know what people believe if we want to understand the way they behave. And the best way to do that is to get to know them and befriend them. After all, this is what Jesus did.

Rob James is a Baptist Pastor broadcaster and writer who currently operates as a church and media consultant for the Evangelical Alliance Wales. He is available for preaching and teaching throughout Wales and can be contacted at [email protected]