Islam

Just 30 per cent of Britons feel that their religion or faith is important to them, according to the 2017 Ipsos MORI survey of global trends. That puts us at the bottom of the international table: only Swedes (29 per cent), Belgians (27 per cent) and the Japanese (22 per cent) are more secular than we are, according to this poll. The global average, meanwhile, is 53 per cent. Muslim Indonesia heads the list with 93 per cent. Christian America is on 68 per cent, despite a recent slump in church attendance. (I’m always a bit suspicious of what Americans tell pollsters about their faith.) Even Australia – hardly a nation that flaunts its piety – is

Germany lost a football match but won a moral victory last night, when Borussia Dortmund were defeated 3-2 at home by Monaco, in the first leg of the quarter finals of the Champions League. To restage a major fixture just 24 hours after a terrorist attack was a remarkable achievement. To restage it when the Dortmund team bus had come under direct attack, landing one of its players in hospital, was nothing short of incredible. Dortmund fans gave bed and board to stranded Monaco supporters, Monaco fans sang Dortmund songs in the stadium, and both teams gave it their all (every Dortmund player was given the option not to play,

In response to the Westminster attack, a 100-strong new counter-extremism taskforce has been announced to deal with the terrorist threat in prisons. I’m taking some credit for this badly needed focus. In the autumn of 2015, the then Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, asked me to lead an independent review of the threat posed by Islamist extremism in prisons, the probation service and the youth justice system. I used to be a prison governor in what was known until just a few days ago as the National Offender Management Service, so I agreed on the understanding that I reported only to him and that I had his full support to go

Religious believers feel nervous about expressing their faith at work – either by wearing symbols or talking about religion. They’re worried they’ll be mocked by secular bullies. And employers aren’t aware of the situation. Or don’t care. That’s the implication of a new ComRes report, which I’m discussing on this week’s Holy Smoke with my new co-presenter Cristina Odone. As you’ll hear, we don’t agree. She thinks religion is becoming the love that dare not speak its name in the workplace. I think we’re in danger of being dragged into a PC grievance culture. There are also some very sharp observations from Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain. Anyway, here’s our

The news that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has cancelled her speaking tour of Australia due to ‘security concerns’ should concern anyone who believes in freedom. It is a dark day when a woman who fled to the West to escape the Islamist suffocations of Somalia, and precisely so that she might think and speak freely, feels she cannot say certain things in certain places. That even a Western, liberal, democratic nation like Australia cannot guarantee Hirsi Ali the freedom to speak her mind without suffering censorship or harm is deeply worrying. It points to the mainstreaming of intolerance, to the adoption by certain people in the West of the illiberalism that makes

‘On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714,’ begins the small, perfect 20th-century novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, ‘the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.’ In the coincidence of crossing the bridge at the same time, explains the writer, Thornton Wilder, these five seemed to have been assembled by pure chance. Or had they? He entitles this first chapter ‘Perhaps An Accident’. He spends the rest of his book tracing the lives of each until the moment when, in a twang of rope, fate hurled all together into the abyss. Thus is the reader’s interest engaged for the human histories that

In yesterday’s Guardian, David Shariatmadari confronts the claim that Islam is an especially violent religion. The claim, he says, is undermined by the fact that jihadi terrorism is a very recent phenomenon. Yes, there is also the violence of empire-building in its history, but you could say this of Christianity too. ‘Aspects of Islamic teaching do indeed justify some kinds of violence. Islam isn’t a pacifist religion. But again, it has this in common with Christianity, Judaism and other world faiths.’ As I have said quite a few times before, it is simply wrong to say that Islam and Christianity have much the same view of war and peace. Judging from

Stay safe, London. Stay safe, everyone. It’s nice, isn’t it, as a sentiment, which is just as well because it is the motto du jour of every celebrity who has added his or her mite to what passes as debate on the terrorist attack last Wednesday. And, my goodness, they all piled in: JK Rowling, Katy Perry, James Corden, Neil Gaiman; every man and woman of them, you’ll be pleased to hear, against this sort of thing, and urging us all – especially those not actually resident in London – to ‘stay safe’. The other trope is that ‘nothing will divide us’, that this is what terrorists want – Stella