When it comes to religion and politics the rule of thumb is don't even go there.

But sometimes you have to.

Times like when Let's Kick Racism Out Of Football funds are granted for cross-racial girls festivals during Ramadan.

With lunch included.

It's like telling a group of knowledge-hungry kids to learn a new language - but giving only some of them internet access and a library card.

Christians can find similarities between Ramadan and Lent. Both are about introspection, meditation and self-restraint. Both last for about a month and both end with a three-day celebration: Easter and Eid Al-Fitr.

But Ramadan isn't just about giving up chocolate. It's a complete fast of food and drink - and smoking and all other carnal pleasures - during daylight hours.1 And it's hard work - NBA star Hakeem The Dream' Olajuwon ended up with an iron deficiency because of his strict observance.

Why couldn't the date - apparently picked to coincide with Ramadan, and the Sikh and Hindu festival of Diwali - have been shifted by a week until after the fasting had been concluded?

Maybe it was a deliberate ploy to use it as a talking point, a real living and breathing example of a different way of life. But then you're turning the Muslim girls into circus sideshows.

And that's not the point, not that the government's love of referring to tick box bridge-building policies under the umbrella of social exclusion' - talk about a misnomer - makes it clear.

But that's where football comes in. A player is a player is a player. All that matters is the colour of their shirt.

Or at least that's all that should matter.

When I started playing aged seven there was a huge fuss because I was a girl. And I got a lot of stick for it, too - mainly after skinning red-faced lads. But the guys on my side saw me as a team-mate.

And they grew up realising that girls are a force to be reckoned with.

Some 19 years on, that boy-girl barrier has been all but broken down. Some of it through sport, some of it from having a female prime minister, some of it thanks to the 60s hangover of independence and rebellion.

But that fearful uncertainty is now on a different frontier - that of race, culture and religion.

And sport is as good a weapon as any on about a million levels.

After all, the world would be a pretty depressing place without bridges.

Imagine Hull without the Humber Bridge into Lincolnshire, Wales without the Severn Bridges and Simon and Garfunkel without their troubled water bypass.

So let's build them. But let's do it using something more substantial than pillars of salt, washed away and absorbed by the passing water.