Islam

Monday

Qanta Ahmed

The terrifying reaction to a panel debate on Islamophobia

Have you ever wondered why so few moderate Muslim voices are heard in the public debate? I used to, until I started to defend my faith against its extremist defamers. I then found out that any Muslim who ventures into this arena to stand up against hardliners is subject to fierce and immediate character assassination. The process is exposed in a Civitas pamphlet, out this month, entitled ‘The No True Muslim’ fallacy. It provides examples of the attempts to silence people like Sara Khan and Fiyaz Mughal by those who have appointed themselves as Islam’s spokesmen. But I can offer another example: the reaction to a recent event at the last

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Should Muslim parents be allowed to challenge LGBT lessons?

We saw two different worlds, or at least two different value systems, collide in the High Court in Birmingham this week. On one side there was Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, the headmistress of Anderton Park, a little primary school in Sparkhill, a largely Pakistani bit of the city; on the other, two men who represent Muslim parents there. You may well have heard about the case. It has turned into one of those totemic issues: tolerant Britain vs backward religious people. At issue is the question of whether and how children should be taught about gay relationships — and whether and how parents who don’t like it should be allowed to protest

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron will regret his failure to crack down on Islamists

It beggars belief that Mickaël Harpon was employed as a computer expert in the intelligence department at police HQ in Paris. It is also barely credible that when Christophe Castaner, France’s minister of the interior, addressed reporters hours after Harpon had murdered four of his colleagues on Thursday he didn’t know of his background. Castaner said that the perpetrator ‘has never given the slightest cause for concern’, yet on Saturday afternoon France’s anti-terror prosecutor described Harpon’s ‘radical vision of Islam’. The 45-year-old had made no secret of where his allegiance lay. A convert to Islam more than a decade ago, Harpon first came to the attention of the authorities in 2015 when

Thursday

Will Heaven

The tricks and tactics of Miqdaad Versi

If truthful reporting risks increasing tension between communities, should it still be published? Do journalists have a social duty to repress certain topics which are unhelpful? These questions tend to separate free societies from those countries where the press is muzzled. In Britain, there has been a tradition: readers decide what is acceptable. But that tradition is under threat, not just from politicians but from the press regulator itself. You may not have heard of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, but it’s worth knowing about. It regulates this magazine and most British newspapers. When it was set up five years ago, its rules, laid out in the Editors’ Code, were

Trevor Phillips

The notion of ‘Islamophobia’ is being used to stifle honest debate

Next year I will begin my fifth decade as a working journalist. As a writer, as an executive — and now as the chair of Index on Censorship — I have always tried to encourage honest, thorough and professional reporting and analysis of the UK’s ethnic and religious minority communities. Unless all our citizens share in a common understanding of our nation, the prospect of an integrated society will remain a distant dream. The key words here are ‘honest’ and ‘thorough’. The tradition of British journalism eschews propaganda and partisanship. In my early days reporting on minority communities in London, many urged our teams to avoid topics that might lead

Monday

Damian Thompson

Why liberals turn a blind eye to the global persecution of Christians

The new episode of Holy Smoke is about the persecution of Christians. That’s a familiar concept, even if we don’t read much about it in the media. But here’s what it means in 2019: The rape, murder and dismemberment of pregnant Christian women in Nigeria by Islamist thugs. The use of face-recognition technology by the Chinese government to monitor, control and, where it deems necessary, eradicate Christian worship by demolishing thousands of churches The evisceration of ancient Christian communities in the lands of the Bible. The relentless torture of Christians in North Korea. The burning of Christian villages by Hindu nationalists in India, and vicious attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

Why was a GCSE student disqualified for criticising halal meat?

We have to talk about the schoolgirl who was disqualified from a GCSE exam on the grounds that she had made ‘obscene racial comments’ about Islam. This bizarre incident is being chalked up to overzealous wokeness on the part of some GCSE examiners. But it’s more than that. It tells us a bigger story about 21st-century Britain and the creeping criminalisation of any questioning of Islam. Too many institutions now believe it is their role to monitor and even punish anti-Islam ‘blasphemy’. The girl — Abigail Ward — is 16 years old and a strict vegetarian. In her GCSE Religious Studies exam she wrote some critical comments about halal meat.

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

The curious reaction to a niqab-wearing homophobe

Are we allowed to criticise the niqab yet? This question crossed my mind as I watched that viral clip of a niqab-clad woman hurling homophobic invective at a Pride marcher in Walthamstow in London. Surely now it will become acceptable to raise questions about this medieval garment (banned in several Muslim countries) and about the views and attitudes of those who wear it? On one level, the footage of the niqab-wearering lady spouting anti-gay hate wasn’t very surprising. Shocking, yes, but not surprising. It’s not as if someone who covers themselves from head to toe in archaic black cloth (which, as Qanta Ahmed has said, is not in the least

Saturday

Qanta Ahmed

What does the Muslim Council of Britain have against Muslims like me? | 13 July 2019

Have you ever wondered why there are so few moderate Muslim voices in the press? It’s not because they don’t exist. There are over a billion of us in the world. In many cases, it’s because of the way we are treated by hardliners. Once again, they have trained their crosshairs on me, this time charging me with ‘misrepresenting Muslim behaviour and belief’ and ‘negating the belief of some Muslims’. If a Muslim speaks up against political Islam – questioning the legitimacy of these self-appointed spokesmen – this is what we can expect. Just look at this week’s report by a group called the Centre for Media Monitoring, which claims that

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

What does the Muslim Council of Britain have against Muslims like me?

Have you ever wondered why there are so few moderate Muslim voices in the press? It’s not because they don’t exist. There are over a billion of us in the world. In many cases, it’s because of the way we are treated by hardliners. Once again, they have trained their crosshairs on me, this time charging me with ‘misrepresenting Muslim behaviour and belief’ and ‘negating the belief of some Muslims’. If a Muslim speaks up against political Islam – questioning the legitimacy of these self-appointed spokesmen – this is what we can expect. Just look at this week’s report by a group called the Centre for Media Monitoring, which claims that

Friday

Douglas Murray

Billy Connolly and the death of free speech

I hope readers will forgive me for returning to a subject I addressed here recently. It was a reflection on the current confusion over who in our society is allowed to speak and who is not. Back then I referred to the oddity of the YouTuber Carl Benjamin being forced to live with his worst ‘joke’ forever while Jo Brand appeared to be able to be forgiven for hers in no seconds flat. Incidentally, since the comedienne advocated an upgrade in the contents of the trend for ‘milkshaking’ it has indeed been stepped up a gear.  Last weekend in Portland, Oregon so-called ‘anti-fascists’ reportedly laced their offerings with skin-corroding substances to

Thursday

Hardeep Singh

Why was a disabled grandad sacked by Asda for sharing a Billy Connolly clip?

I don’t prefer shopping at a specific supermarket. For some it’s a sign of social status, like the toffs who pride themselves in navigating the aisles of Waitrose, while sneering at the plebs in Lidl. However, my supermarket choice may now be influenced by the outrageous behaviour of Asda (in Dewsbury), who sacked a disabled grandad for sharing a clip of Billy Connolly ridiculing both Islam and Christianity on his personal Facebook page. Has blasphemy become a sackable offence in modern Britain? The man in question is 54-year-old Brian Leach from Yorkshire. Leach, who’d worked for Asda for five years, told the Examiner Live: ‘I was summarily dismissed without notice

Friday

Fiyaz Mughal

It’s time to crack down on Muslim-on-Muslim hatred

There is no doubt that we need a clear definition of anti-Muslim hatred. Having set up Tell MAMA – an organisation monitoring attacks on Muslims – in 2011, I have seen anti-Muslim hate jump in the years since. Fear within Muslim communities has risen as mosques, people and Islamic institutions have been targeted. Together with a corresponding rise in far-right extremist groups, a series of Islamist extremist attacks and the wild west of social media, it can be a difficult time to be a Muslim in Britain. This is why I welcome the government’s call for a working definition of Islamophobia that can find a middle ground between anti-Muslim bigotry, legitimate criticism of

Thursday

Qanta Ahmed

Africa’s liberal Mufti

 Kigali, Rwanda To most outsiders, Rwanda is still synonymous with genocide. Nearly a million killed in 100 days; almost three quarters of the Tutsi population dead. The country’s attempts to rebuild have been much commented on, but something else is overlooked: Rwanda has become an astonishing oasis of tolerant Islam and, in many ways, an example to the West. In Rwanda, there is an Islam which stands firm against the petrochemical ‘Gulf Stream’ of Wahhabi finance, despite lacking the huge wealth that Muslims in the Arab world enjoy. It also refuses to yield control to the neo-fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood now backed by Qatar and Turkey. This independence and

Monday

Ed Husain

Roger Scruton is a friend, not a foe, of Islam

I am not a right-winger. I am ashamed to say that I discovered Sir Roger Scruton only four years ago when an argument in a Washington DC think-tank led to a search for contemporary philosophers who took a long view of civilisation, history, ideas, and implications of philosophy.  It happened when I was an advisor to Tony Blair and visited Washington DC for a think-tank meeting representing Tony. There, left-wing Muslim activists, who put their community’s interests before their country, accused me of being a ‘neoconservative’ because I argued that the national security of our countries and peoples mattered more than any Muslim community identity. A safer country, logically, meant

Thursday

The Spectator

What Isis wants

It has become commonplace to describe terror attacks as ‘senseless’. The horrific Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which cost the lives of more than 350 people, several British citizens among them, make little sense. The only way to understand them is as a symptom of the growing globalisation of terror. The tactics — synchronised bombs on a Christian holy day — are grotesquely familiar. And it was not surprising to learn that one of the attackers was partly educated in London. The attacks, on three Catholic churches and three hotels favoured by westerners, clearly targeted Christians. The culprits have been identified as local Islamic extremists. The purpose of the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We’re in a terrible tangle over Islam

The carnage in Sri Lanka which left more than 300 dead may have been carried out by ‘Buddhists’, according to the BBC Today presenter Nick Robinson on the morning after those hideous bombings. We all grope slowly towards meaning, don’t we? We look for precedent, we search for clues. I did both when I heard of the murders and came to a different conclusion to Nick. Someone had attacked Christians and westerners in a series of suicide bombings: that gave me an inkling. Perhaps — just perhaps — it wasn’t Buddhists. Perhaps it was instead the fanatics responsible for the vast majority of terrorism outrages in the world (Global Terrorism

Thursday

Edward Faulks

Adopting the new Islamophobia definition would be terrible for the Tories  

I do not think I am alone in having real difficulty with the word Islamophobia and attempts to define it as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. Racism of any sort is unacceptable and catered for in the existing law, but this definition is impossibly vague. The reality is that it will preclude any criticism of “Muslimness” which, however well balanced and evidenced, will automatically be regarded as racist. Let me give you an example. When I was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we examined legislation to ensure that it did not involve any violations of human rights. For the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bad blood | 4 April 2019

The Phlebotomist by Ella Road explores the future of genetics. Suppose a simple blood test were able to tell us how long we will live and what disease will kill us. If the tests were compulsory and the results publicly available, a new hierarchy based on life expectancy would emerge. Citizens facing chronic illness or early death would struggle to find jobs and spouses. The scientists who administer the tests would come under pressure to falsify the results. And alpha citizens with high-grade DNA would be murdered, and their blood harvested to create fake genetic identities. This gruesome, ingenious and all-too-believable scenario is presented through a squeaky-clean romance between two

Friday

Tom Gross

Is New Zealand really such a tolerant country?

For years, New Zealand has been talked of as a beacon of liberalism, a country that other democracies including Britain – and, in particular, Trump’s supposedly intolerant America – should try to emulate. This has been even more pronounced since the massacre of Muslim worshippers at two New Zealand mosques by an Australian white supremacist a fortnight ago. In a rare gesture, the world’s tallest building was dramatically lit up last week with a giant image to honour New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern for her leadership following the killings. The Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai beamed out a photo of Ardern embracing a woman at a mosque in Wellington. In the United