Some time after I wrote this, at an Eid party held in the Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle, thrown for Scottish muslims by members of the newly formed Scottish Parliament, we were allowed to visit the rooms that house the Scottish Crown Jewels, and where they keep the Stone of Destiny. Late at night, with no tourists around, I stood alone in front of that stone, and it had a presence more powerful than any of the jewels on display. I can assure you, however, that power pales into insignificance when compared to the power which emanates from the Black Stone set in the corner of the Ka'abah.

At last, the Scottish Office has decided we can be trusted with the information, and files kept secret since the fifties have been released to prove the authenticity of the Stone of Destiny.

It seems that if we're to get it back it would be useful if we agreed it was the genuine article, and without the accompanying paperwork how many of us could tell the difference between one bit of old rock and another. After all, it isn't a gemstone, and hasn't even been carved into a work of art. It's value is purely that it is what it is, and has been where it's been, associated with Scottish kingship for centuries.

Muslims also possess a stone that is of tremendous symbolic importance, a small black stone in a silver mount set in the corner of Kaaba, the large black draped house of worship, which muslims face at times of prayer. I hate to think of how many times I have read of "the black stone muslims worship", when of course, we worship God not rocks. We do kiss it at the start of the rituals of pilgrimage, but even there the relationship is clear. When Umar, the Prophet's Companion came to kiss the Black Stone, he said loudly "I wish to point out that this is not an act of worship. I kiss this stone only because I saw the Prophet do so." and proceeded to place his lips in the same spot as Muhammad's had been a short time before.

Nowadays, the time that separates Muhammad from the pilgrim is much longer, but the place of contact remains the same. The Black Stone provides a point of continuity in space bridging more than fourteen hundred years, though in fact the bridge is even longer, for the stone was placed there by Abraham and Ishmael when they built the Kaaba, long before the Temple of Solomon, in the days of Genesis.

But even that is not the start of it's history. One muslim tradition suggests that the stone fell to earth from the Garden of Eden with Adam, since when the sins of the children of Adam have turned it from white to black. For the worship of God has a tradition that goes back a lot longer than Scottish kingship, and if the truth were to be told it is actually a great deal more important.