Isis

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Paris massacre: ten developments, as of Sunday morning

Barack Obama flies into Turkey for a G20 conference now likely to have the Islamic State as its theme. Here are ten developments. The death toll has risen to 129, with 352 others wounded, 100 critically. Five Britons are feared dead, and another five injured. A passport found near the body of one attacker was that of a 25-year-old Syrian migrant, according to French investigators. The Greek government said he had been registeredat the Aegean island of Leros on 3 October. Another attacker has been identified as a 29-year-old Frenchman who had been on a jihadi watch list. His father and brother are being held by police for questioning Another jihadi had a

Saturday

John R. Bradley

The Islamic State goes global

When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect only a warped genocidal fanaticism. Surely they were far too otherworldly, with

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

“The first of the storm” – translation of Islamic State statement after Paris attacks

This morning, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks – the first time it has laid claim to any attacks in Europe. It released a rambling statement in French, referring to a music concert as a “profligate prostitution party”. It also seemed to reference Charlie Hebdo. Here is an English translation:- In the name of Allah, the All Merciful, the Very Merciful. The Very High All Said: “It is He who expelled the ones who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture from their homes at the first gathering. You did not think they would leave, and they thought that their fortresses would protect them from Allah ; but [the decree of]

Douglas Murray

Will politicians finally admit that the Paris attacks had something to do with Islam?

The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack last month. It is what David Cameron said after two British extremists cut off the head of Drummer Lee Rigby in London, when ‘Jihadi John’ cut off the head of

John R. Bradley

The Islamic State says France is atop its target list – and declares a new war

Speaking from the Élysée Palace, Francois Hollande has said that the terror attacks which killed 127 in Paris last night were the work of the Islamic State. What happened yesterday in Paris and in Saint Denis is an act of war and this country needs to make the right decisions to fight this war. This act committed by the terrorist army, Islamic State, is against who we are, against a free country that speaks to the whole world. It is an act of war prepared and planned outside, with outside involvement which this investigation will seek to establish. It is an act of absolute barbarism. France will be ruthless in

Friday

Douglas Murray

Drones get the job done, as Jihadi John may have just discovered

Excellent news, if it is confirmed, that Mohammed Emwazi – aka ‘Jihadi John’ – has discovered the hard way that seventy-two virgins have not been waiting around for him on a cloud. It is more than a year since David Cameron announced that this country would chase the murderer of British, American and Japanese aid-workers and journalists to the ends of the earth. Unsurprisingly Emwazi just had to be found in Syria. But it is good news that he has been found, not just because justice is served but because it might make other people reflect on the merits of the post-Westminster university career-path that he chose. I imagine there

Sebastian Payne

Jihadi John targeted in U.S. airstrikes in Syria

Mohammed Emwazi, the British Isis militant better known as Jihadi John, looks likely to have been killed in an airstrike by the U.S. air force. Although there has been no official confirmation, No.10 sources have told The Guardian there is a ‘high degree of certainty’ that Emwazi was killed in the strikes. The Pentagon has released the following statement: ‘U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, on Nov. 12, 2015 targeting Mohamed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John.” Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist

Thursday

John R. Bradley

The caliphate strikes back

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/jeremyhunt-scatastrophicmistake/media.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray discusses what Isis might do next” startat=1814] Listen [/audioplayer]When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Russia suspends all flights to Egypt. What will it do next?

Just yesterday, Vladimir Putin criticised David Cameron’s decision  suspended all flights to Egypt. This afternoon, he has done the same – which suggests that the Kremlin now agrees with Britain that there is a strong chance that the Airbus 321 was downed by an Isil bomb. And if Putin does believe that, then we expect some kind of retaliation. Yesterday, the Russians were telling Brits to wait for the outcome of the investigation before suspending flights to Egypt. This afternoon, Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB security service, said: ‘Until we know the real reasons for what happened, I consider it expedient to stop Russian flights to Egypt. Above all, this concerns tourist routes.’

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Our policy towards Islamic State makes no sense

If Islamic State is a threat to Britain that requires a military response, then surely we should be attacking it on both sides of the Syrian/Iraqi border? Our current policy of only hitting it in Iraq, when its operation there is directed from Syria and resupplied from there, makes neither strategic nor moral sense. So, why is Britain not hitting Islamic State in Syria too? Well, that goes back to the legacy of 2013 and the Commons refusal to back bombing Syria then. But the truth is that bombing Islamic State in Syria is not the same as ‘bombing Syria’; it is hitting a terrorist group in a part of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why are student-union officials censoring criticism of Islamic State?

Just when you thought the self-important, ban-happy uber-bureaucrats who run student unions couldn’t get any worse, they go and No Platform a guy who fought with the Kurds against Isis. Yes, not content with expunging lads’ mags from campus, crying for the censorship of everyone from Germaine Greer to Dapper Laughs, and wailing about Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ like outraged nuns at a school disco, now they have silenced someone who spent five months facing down the head-choppers of the Islamic State. Macer Gifford, a former student at University College London (UCL), was due to give a talk at UCL this week on his experiences with the YPG, the fighting

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s Syrian stew

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/civilwarinthecatholicchurch/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss whether MPs will ever vote to bomb Syria” startat=864] Listen [/audioplayer]David Cameron doesn’t do regret. It is not in his nature to sit and fret about decisions that he has taken and can now do nothing about. But there are still a few things that rankle with him. One of those is the House of Commons’ rejection of military action in Syria two years ago. This defeat was a personal and a political humiliation for Cameron. For months, he had been pushing for action against Assad. President Obama had finally accepted that something must be done following the Syrian regime’s use of

Con Coughlin

Britain’s armed forces no longer have the resources for a major war

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/civilwarinthecatholicchurch/media.mp3″ title=”Con Coughlin and Tom Tugendhat debate the state of Britain’s armed forces” startat=1561] Listen [/audioplayer]This Sunday, David Cameron will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph to commemorate those who made the ultimate sacrifice during two ruinous world wars. People will say ‘Never Again’ and Cameron will agree. But then, thanks to the drastic cuts he has made to the strength of our armed forces, the Prime Minister need not worry himself unduly about Britain’s involvements in any future conflicts. He need not gnash his teeth too much about MPs’ reluctance to back military intervention in Syria because, as matters stand, Britain would be unable to fight a major

Tuesday

John R. Bradley

Russia’s dramatic new policy towards Assad is very revealing

Yesterday I argued that if it became clear that the Russian plane was brought down over Egypt by a bomb, Vladamir Putin may be forced to reassess his Syrian campaign – especially in light of a strong counterattack by Islamic State on the ground in Syria. Today, as the bomb theory became the only plausible explanation for the catastrophe, the Kremlin is strongly hinting that such a radical reassessment is already underway. Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, has today said on a Russian radio station it is no longer ‘crucial’ that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stay in power. ‘Absolutely not, we’ve never said that,’ she insisted when pressed, adding

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No10 insists that Cameron may still seek vote on bombing Syria

Number 10 is this morning pushing back against the reports that David Cameron has abandoned a vote on extending British military involvement in action against Isis to Syria. Sources insist that they do not recognise the stories that have appeared in a number of papers and that nothing has changed. Those reports suggest that Cameron was struggling to persuade sufficient numbers of Labour MPs to back his stance. This is not particularly surprising given it was always going to be difficult to be confident that MPs from another party would definitely do as they said. The Tory whips can hardly apply the same methods to those MPs in the Opposition

Monday

John R. Bradley

The Russian plane crash could undermine Putin’s Syria strategy

It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the ‘only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft’ and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt’s already decimated tourism industry. A jihadist would have been able to infiltrate one of the country’s supposedly most secure airports to plant a sizeable explosive device on a specific airline. PR disasters do not come much worse than that – and just one

Thursday

Tom Holland

Of gods and men

Over the stupefyingly long course of Egyptian history, gods have been born and they have died. Some 4,000 years ago, amid the chaos that marked the fragmentation of the original pharaonic state, an incantation was inscribed on the side of a coffin. It imagined a time when there had been nothing in existence save a single divine Creator. ‘I was alone in the emptiness,’ the god proclaimed, ‘and could find no place to stand.’ Nevertheless, beside him, he could feel the gods that were yet to exist. ‘They were with me, these deities waiting to be born. I came into being and Becoming became.’ The gods emerged, to reign first

Thursday

Douglas Murray

William Shawcross is right: Islamists are skilled at lawfare

Regular readers may recall the charming group ‘Cage’. This is the organisation which made headlines earlier this year when Mohammed Emwazi (aka ‘Jihadi John’) was outed as one of their associates. The response of ‘Cage’ was to extol what a ‘beautiful’ young man Jihadi John was, and claim that if it weren’t for Britain’s security services their friend would never have thought of cutting off infidel heads in the Syrian desert. After that PR low, the Charity Commission suggested that UK charities like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust might be unwise to continue shelling out hundreds of thousands of pounds to the group. There are strict rules in the UK

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 15 October 2015

Home Two groups were launched, one in favour of remaining in the European Union and the other in favour of leaving. Vote Leave drew support from Conservatives for Britain, from Labour Leave and from Business for Britain. Lord Rose, chairman of the new group Britain Stronger in Europe, said: ‘To claim that the patriotic course for Britain is to retreat, withdraw and become inward-looking is to misunderstand who we are as a nation.’ The Metropolitan Police withdrew officers stationed outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London where Julian Assange sought refuge in 2012, a watch that had cost £12.6 million. Marlon James from Jamaica won the Man Booker Prize for A Brief History

Wednesday

John R. Bradley

Is the West arming the Syrian People’s Front or the People’s Front of Syria?

The United States has abandoned training rebel forces on the ground in Syria but not equipping them, or at least some of them, and over the weekend its military cargo planes dropped 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups in the north of the country. All apparently reached their intended target: yet another hastily formed alliance intent on fighting both the Islamic State and the Assad regime. Alas, despite being created just days ago, in keeping with Syrian rebels‘ almost constantly shifting alliances, it confusingly already has two names: the Democratic Forces of Syria and the Syrian Arab Coalition. The former includes both Arab groups and the Kurdish YPG militia. However,