CATHOLICS are still banned, by Act of Parliament, from succeeding to the throne.

And the language of the law does this in stark, deprecating terms. It talks of "papists" and the "popish religion".

That was back in 1700. There were good arguments at the time for this approach. England had spent a century and a half in turmoil about what its state religion should be - Catholic or Protestant. A violent bloody Civil War was still fresh in the memory.

The conflicts were not just about theology. They were about power. England was scared stiff about the enemy without, and the enemy within. The Spanish, the French, the ever rebellious Celtic (and Catholic) "fringes" gave the government nightmares.

So the term "Catholic" became in many people's eyes a short hand for "enemy". And, however law-abiding and loyal to the Crown you may in reality have been, you suffered grievous discrimination.

The legal discrimination against Catholics was not removed until the middle of the nineteenth century; but the practical discrimination went on and there is still a complex debate about whether and how the Act of Settlement should be amended or repealed.

So the many thousands of people of the Catholic faith are likely to have an acute idea of being subject to mass discrimination because of their faith.

Well, let's swap "Catholic", for "Muslim". I don't believe there is mass discrimination against people of the Muslim faith in the UK, and yes, there are some who hold extremist views.

But imagine what it feels like to be a law-abiding British citizen - as the majority of people of the Muslim faith are - and wake up to headlines in a national newspapers "British Muslims Are Too Extreme", and then see a picture of your mosque blazened across the paper. I'd be mighty upset.

It's unjust in two linked respects.

First, the reports are a travesty of what happened when Dr Barham Salih came to Blackburn during the last election.

He was there to support me. He wanted to be able to say, from his perspective as an Iraqi, that he believed we had got it right, not wrong, on the Iraq war. Of course, plenty disagreed with both of us - white as well as Asian, and that didn't make them extremists.

There were some people vocal in their extreme views - most from out of town.

Like me Dr Saleh didn't like their views, or methods, and said so, not least because they were seeking to intimidate my constituents, many of whom also did not like the Iraq war.

He attended two meetings with me, but neither anywhere near the Millham Street mosque, whose photograph was aligned with the story in one report. The great irony is that mosque is moderate on any basis. It was the one which invited Condoleezza Rice to visit.

Second, there's the appalling guilt-by-association tone of the story - just like the way in the past all Catholics were tarred with the brush that they could not be trusted to be proper British citizens.

Even during the worst of the IRA's atrocities the newspapers did not blacken the name of all Catholics for the crimes of the terrorists. It's time to stop doing this with those of another faith.