Islam

Islamic extremism and the hypocrisy of the Church of England

The Church of England has written to David Cameron accusing him of lacking ‘a coherent or comprehensive approach to Islamic extremism as it is developing across the globe’. The letter, signed by the the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, and approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, also reportedly accuses the PM of turning his back on Christians slaughtered or made homeless in northern Iraq – and wonders why Cameron has chosen to concentrate on the plight of the Yazidis instead. These criticisms are spot on. But I’m surprised that the C of E has had the brass neck to make them. For decades, the Anglican and Catholic Churches

Richard Dawkins doesn’t get it: religion is rational

Where to start with Prof Dawkins’ latest observations about religion and fundamentalism? In response to questions from an audience in Edinburgh where he was promoting his autobiography this week he observed that ‘nice’ religious people give credence to suicide bombers. It’s remarkable, really, that after a good eight years of debate and dialogue with people like Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sacks — viz, perfectly rational believers — he can still say the following: ‘…there is a sense in which the moderate, nice religious people – nice Christians, nice Muslims – make the world safe for extremists. ‘Because the moderates are so nice we all are brought up with the idea that

Inaction is easy; action is harder but needed now

It’s easier to oppose than propose war. The conflict between Israel and Hamas inspired #NotInMyName on Twitter, and opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was spearheaded by the ‘Stop The War’ Coalition. It is easy for ‘anti-interventionists’ to cite negative consequences of action already documented, for example in post-invasion Iraq, than for ‘interventionists’ to make their case. Insults like ‘warmonger’ or ‘blood on your hands’ slip off the tongue more readily than complicated arguments to the effect that inaction can cause even more blood-letting and chaos, and that those who advocate it bear some responsibility for the ensuing carnage. The present crisis facing the Yazidis, Kurds and indeed

Rod Liddle

It’s OK to mention anti-Semitic attacks – but not who commits them

I was attacked by a swan the other day, as I walked along the bank of the River Stour in Kent. The creature climbed out of the water and lunged towards me, wings puffed up, making this guttural and hate-filled coughing noise. I kicked out at its stupid neck and told it to fuck off and the bird backed away towards the river, still making that demented hissing, like a badly maintained boiler. At first I was mystified as to how I had gained its enmity. I wasn’t near its mate and still further distant from its sallow and bedraggled idiot children. Nor had I advanced towards it, or even

A lesson of Iraq in 2014: the nation-state is the future

The collapse of some of the Sykes-Picot states in 2014 will spur people to ask which way the world is heading and what it all tells us, just as with the fall of Communism in 1989. After Communism we had at first Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History,which foresaw the triumph of western-style liberal democracy, and then the more prescient, although equally controversial, The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntingdon, which viewed the world as essentially consisting of power blocks centred around ancient civilizational, religious ties. So what does 2014 mean? A clear lesson that the Yazidis and Christian Assyrians have learned is that without a patch of land for

Owen Jones is lying about Israel. Plain and simple.

Owen Jones’s column in the Guardian is headlined ‘Anti-Jewish hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is.’ Sadly the article falls well short of that headline’s aspiration. At one point in the piece Owen singles me out for criticism: ‘Take Douglas Murray, a writer with a particular obsession with Islam.’ (I suppose ‘obsession’, rather than ‘interest’, say, is intended to suggest something untoward. But I confess that I am indeed especially interested in one of the major stories of our day.) Owen goes on to say of me: ‘“Thousands of anti-Semites have today succeeded in bringing central London to an almost total standstill” was his reprehensible

What has Hezbollah’s Secretary General been reading this summer?

In Britain we seem to be obsessed by what our politicians are reading this summer. It tells us, so we think, about the way they’re thinking or perhaps just what they want us to think they’re thinking. Why don’t we study what other political leaders are interested in? Lebanon’s Daily Star offered us a revealing vision of one regional actor, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Sitting with Lebanon’s veteran Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, in late July, Nasrallah has a copy of James Barr’s A Line in the Sand in front of him. The book, one of the best researched and most readable studies of the making of the modern

Damian Thompson

At last! An Archbishop of Canterbury recognises that Islamists slaughter Christians

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has just issued a statement about the slaughter of Christians in Iraq that is both brave and perfectly judged. What an outstanding representative of English Christianity he is turning out to be – in sorry contrast to his predecessor. Here is the section of Archbishop Welby’s statement that illustrates his keen judgment. It makes clear that he does not think that Christian lives are worth more than those of Yazidis or Muslims. (The ordained Anglican priest Chris Bryant MP accused me of believing this when I asked him on Twitter today why, in common with many liberal Christians, he had remained silent on the

The three golden rules of intervention

Barack Obama has authorised the use of targeted airstrikes in Iraq against forces of the Islamic State, which are hell-bent on massacring Yazidi and Christian minorities, and threatening American assets and citizens. David Cameron has welcomed Barack Obama’s decision. There are already voices calling for wider deeper intervention; special forces and conventional ground troops have been mentioned by former US generals and diplomats. Interventions have a habit of escalating, a point that Douglas Murray made in The Spectator this time last year when Barack Obama and David Cameron were preparing to intervene in Syria. Douglas urged Obama and Cameron (and any other statesmen considering intervention) to prepare throroughly: ‘The repercussions

Violence, threats and blackmail ought to have no place in politics

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_07_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Tim Stanley discuss Baroness Warsi’s resignation” startat=462] Listen [/audioplayer]I have never issued a call for violence before, and I’m certainly not going to start now. But I wonder if people might consider the following, purely hypothetical situation. In her resignation letter over the UK government not being anti-Israel enough for her, Sayeeda Warsi backed up her ‘case’ by writing: ‘Early evidence from the Home Office and others shows that the fallout of the current conflict and the potential for the crisis in Gaza and our response to it becoming a basis for radicalisation could have consequences for us for years to come.’ Let us ignore

Baroness Warsi – commendable but stunningly wrong

I was a little saddened by Baroness Warsi’s resignation. I like the woman; it is an odd and disturbing thing to say, but I felt I had more in common with her – a Muslim, Asian, woman – than almost any other prominent Tory. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps class has something to do with it. I’m no Conservative but I think Cameron could have made more of her: he’s short of people who a). possess a vagina b). were state school educated c). come from ethnic minorities and d). talk as if they are members of the human race. She resigned on a point of principle, which

Baroness Warsi was over-promoted, incapable and incompetent

Farewell then Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi. The most over-promoted, incapable and incompetent minister of recent times has finally done the nation one service and resigned. This morning she announced on Twitter that she can ‘no longer support government policy on Gaza.’ That would be government policy that now includes reviewing all arms export licenses to Israel? Not strong enough for Sayeeda, it would seem. It was not hard to see this coming. Not just because Warsi’s Twitter activity in recent weeks has mainly consisted of pumping out support for Hamas-run Gaza and berating supporters of Israel for saying things she disagrees with, but also because she has shown a career-long sympathy

Look where Tony Blair’s messianic fervour has left us

While trawling down the Mail Online’s right-hand-side of the page porno strip, to consider analytically the latest photographs of Jessica Alba in a swimming costume, I came across a rather good piece of journalism by Stephen Glover. Yes, yes; you know this already. But the horrors inflicted by US/UK liberal evangelism on the world (and then later, by extension, on ourselves) cannot be understated. Liberal evangelism and, as Glover has it, arrogance and narcissism on the part of primarily Tony Blair. To which we might add an abiding stupidity, too. And a messianic fervour. It was always the case that no matter how foul the despots who ran those ghastly

Melanie McDonagh

Next to the great halal scandal, grouse is small beer. But which has M&S banned?

Last year I got my grouse at M&S. The birds, I mean. There’s a little fresh meat section in the Kensington branch round the corner from me at work, and it was dead handy to get game there when I was in money. In fact, if you want gastronomic popular elitism, grouse in supermarkets is as close as you get. Simply roasted with buttered breadcrumbs…nothing nicer, really. Tragically, the treat’s off this year. Mark Avery, the former conservation director of the RSPB, has been lobbying the chief executive Marc Bolland not to stock it, on the basis that ‘if you persist with selling grouse meat, it sends a clear signal

Now that Richard Dawkins is attacking Muslims and feminists, the atheist Left suddenly discover he’s a bigot

‘Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?’ asks Eleanor Robertson in the Guardian today. Ms Robertson is a ‘feminist and writer living in Sydney’. She follows to the letter the Guardian’s revised style guide for writing about Prof Dawkins: wring your hands until your fingers are raw, while muttering ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown’. For some time now Dawkins has been saying rude things about Muslims and feminists. This makes him a bigot in the eyes of the Left — and especially the Guardian, which is extraordinarily and mysteriously protective of Islam. As Robertson puts it: ‘Sure, he wrote some pop science books back in the

In Iraq, ancient Christianity lies in ruins. But who cares?

The Mar Behnam monastery outside Mosul, seized by ISIS just over a week ago, bears an inscription in the Turkic language of the Mongols who invaded Iraq in the 13th century. It asks for ‘the peace of Mar [Saint] Behnam to come down and rest on the Khan, his elders and his wives’. Why should Mongols revere Behnam, a convert to Christianity who was martyred by the region’s Zoroastrian ruler in the fourth century? The answer is that the Church of East to which Behnam converted had been the world’s greatest Christian Church. Its missionaries were firmly established in China by the seventh century. It was independent of both Rome

Michael Fallon marks century of Muslim service in British armed forces

After nineteen hours without food, nor even a drop of water, the prospect of the single succulent date which breaks the fast looms ever larger in the mind as sunset nears. A few minutes after nine o’clock last night, similar scenes were doubtless playing out in mosques and Muslim homes around Britain. But this event was a little different. As the imam’s prayer rang out across the high ceilinged courtyard, many of those kneeling to pray were in khaki uniforms while others wore headscarves. The Ministry of Defence had invited Muslim soldiers and civic Muslim groups to break their Ramadan fast with a celebratory feast in the Whitehall citadel of

British Muslims must confront the truth of the ‘Trojan Horse’ schools

The Trojan Horse reports are in, and they make for damning reading.  ‘An aggressive Islamist agenda… a coordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos’. Teachers who claimed that the Boston marathon bombing and the murder of Lee Rigby were in fact hoaxes and an ‘Attack on Islam’. And so on. The grim details are out. But there is a story behind this story which has not been thought about, though it ought to be. That is the response of Britain’s Muslim communities to these awful revelations. Ever since 9/11 a considerable appeal from the non-Muslim majority in the West has been ‘where are the moderates?

The Trojan Horse affair is about subversion, and only Gove understood this

Peter Clarke’s powerful report on the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham schools is confirmation of the weakness of David Cameron in demoting Michael Gove. When Mr Gove appointed Mr Clarke to conduct the inquiry, there was execration — even from the local police chief — about how wickedly provocative it was to put a policeman with counter-terrorism experience into the role. But Mr Clarke was just the man and his inquiry has swiftly and efficiently uncovered serious problems of Islamist bullying and infiltration. Too late to reap a political reward, Mr Gove is vindicated. The next time this problem arises — and there undoubtedly will be a next time in another British city — what minister will have the courage to do what he did? The Clarke

Celebrating diversity means imposing misogyny

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don’t be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my