Islam

Monday

Douglas Murray

Better elected Islamists than dictators?

If readers have a couple of hours to spare can I recommend watching a debate which took place in America last week? Not the predictably unenlightening Presidential one, but a discussion of one of the most important and complex dilemmas of our time. Organised by the excellent Intelligence Squared US, the motion is: ‘Better Elected Islamists than Dictators’. It includes three excellent speakers, Zuhdi Jasser, Daniel Pipes and Reuel Marc Gerecht. The discussion is interesting in part because the side arguing for the motion do not like Islamists and the side against the motion do not like dictators. As Daniel Pipes pithily sums up at one point, ‘nobody likes anybody’.

Friday

Douglas Murray

The Pineapple of Hate

We have had the dreaded cartoons, films, teddy-bear and more. But I bet that until now nobody imagined we would ever see a (cue dreaded music) ‘Pineapple of Hate’.  Yet despite the now familiar feeling that this is all some terrible spoof, the fruit has joined the growing list of household items which can be legitimately regarded as ‘blasphemous’. As Student Rights reports, the crime-scene was the recent freshers’ fair at the University of Reading. For it was there that the Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society stall included a pineapple with the word ‘Mohammed’ on it. I always doubted that the Danish or French cartoons looked much like the prophet of Islam.

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

Geopolitics in the 21st Century

Some dog-munching old thug from Pyongyang has been addressing the United Nations, warning that his country is the ‘world’s hotspot’ and a spark could trigger a thermonuclear war. It’s quite possible I’m wrong about this, as I am wrong about a lot of things, but North Korea worries me far less than one supposes it should. Partly because it is so far away. And partly because the North Koreans are utterly useless and their fatuous ideology is shared by nobody else in the world (apart from one or two academics in British universities). Even a country as thoroughly grim as China finds Pyongyang ludicrous and insupportable; when push comes to

Monday

Douglas Murray

Party conferences: a vapid kind of hell

As I may have intimated last week, political conference season is a particular kind of hell. Most of us just are not diverted by faked class warfare or efforts by Ed Balls to be more ‘butch’ than David Cameron. Anyhow – whilst the few remaining members of political parties come together to remind the rest of us why we want nothing to do with them, here are some things that are actually happening. 1). In a video posted on Sunday, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher  Wagdy Ghoneim declared that liberals, modernists and secularists are all ‘infidels’ who must be tried and killed for abandoning Islam: ‘If they do not repent,

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Freedom betrayed

I have a piece in the magazine this week on the disgraceful behaviour of Hillary Clinton and other US officials in the latest round of cartoon wars. During the last week the US Secretary of State turned into a film critic, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – head of the most powerful and expensive military in history – relegated himself to a telephone-salesman offering up his country’s founding principles at a knock-down price, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney decided that his job included condemning the work of amateur directors. But it gets worse. The same Jay Carney has now decided that his remit extends to

Steerpike Steerpike

No surrender for Salman

As the Middle East reels and Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo up their security, one man who knows more than most about the absurd over-reaction of vast swathes of the Arab world has offered some advice. Speaking to Sky News, Sir Salmon Rushdie is not backing down: ‘To tell you the truth, I’m a little tired of religion demanding special privileges. I have all sorts of people attacking me, it doesn’t inspire me to go out and commit an act of violence.’ Rushdie points out that any other idea can be discussed, satirised or taken seriously. ‘It’s very important in England, and Europe and America, where we are fortunate enough

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Joseph Anton, a brilliant and important book

I’m halfway through Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of what it was like to be given a death sentence by medieval religious savages. I’m reviewing the book for next week’s magazine. We were, as a country, rather less than unequivocal in our determination to protect Rushdie for his right to exercising free speech; plenty of people who should have known better gave succour to his persecutors. I don’t know if the oleaginous Labour MP Keith Vaz falls into that category, mind; his support for the howling mob was, I suppose, predictable. It’s a brilliant and important book. And there is a surprising amount of humour in it. So I’ll leave

Monday

Melanie McDonagh

Britain should call for reform of existing blasphemy laws

Around the time that speculation was mounting about Tony Blair’s possible return to British politics last month, I went to a public discussion about faith and public life by the man himself and Rowan Williams in which Charles Moore was both participant — or should I say, combatant — and moderator. It was, as you’d expect, a lively affair in which the two Catholic converts took radically dissimilar views on most things, and Islam in particular. In retrospect, one of the remarks that strikes me as remarkable was Mr Blair’s throwaway contention that inter-faith discussion should be conducted on terms agreeable to the faiths in question. The implication was, though

David Blackburn

Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ revisited

The publication of Joseph Anton (tomorrow), Salman Rushdie’s much anticipated memoir, has given newspapers cause to revisit The Satanic Verses. The commentary focuses on the bloodthirsty and backward response that the book continues to provoke. The novel has become a totem in various political and religious ‘debates’ (a word that is hopelessly misplaced in this perverse context of fatwahs and feeling). It is appropriate that Rushdie is celebrated as a champion of liberalism and rationality. There is no doubt that The Satanic Verses is among the most important books ever written. But, is it one of the finest? Despite the reams of brilliant and brave writing on the Rushdie affair, the

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Film protests in Middle East

It’s about time we revamped the rather stale format of the BBC film review show, the one that has that Nina Simone signature tune and was presented by Barry Norman and more latterly Jonathan Ross. I don’t even know if the programme is still extant. Anyway, my idea is for a new review show which would be set in a branch of the KFC franchise and presented by fundamentalist Muslims. Any film they didn’t like they’d burn down the restaurant and decapitate the manager, or manageress. Are these people running riot in Khartoum, Cairo and Tripoli just very stupid, or mentally ill? Or both?

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Salman Rushdie: He’s still here

Until the launch party for Salman Rushdie’s autobiography, the best story I’d heard about the forced marriage of literary London and the Special Branch came from the night of the 1992 general election. Melvyn Bragg was hosting a party to watch the results. The guests were overwhelmingly left-leaning writers and intellectuals, and had gathered to celebrate an apparently certain Labour victory that would end 13 years of Tory rule. Yet as the evening wore on, nothing went according to plan. Neil Kinnock’s Labour was winning a few seats, but John Major’s Tories were doing far better than the polls predicted. The chatter subsided. Apprehension replaced expectation. Finally, the BBC announced

Friday

Douglas Murray

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rank hypocrisy

Western media and governments which are currently white-washing the Muslim Brotherhood should take note of the following, a classic example of the organisation’s traditionally forked-tongue way of working. Ahram Online carries the story which relates the recent rioting across North Africa and the Middle East. After the attack on the US Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English-language twitter yesterday tweeted: ‘We r relieved none of @USEmbassyCairo staff were harmed & hope US-Eg relations will sustain turbulence of Tuesday’s events.’ The US Embassy tweeted their thanks in the following way: ‘Thanks.  By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds?  I hope you know we

Thursday

Douglas Murray

General Dempsey’s disastrous intervention

When the Danish Cartoons affair broke in 2005-6 there was considerable pressure on the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to issue a condemnation and apology. Demonstrating considerable statesmanship he nevertheless repeatedly said that ‘You cannot apologise for something you have not done.’ When so-called ‘community leaders’ insisted on seeing him he refused because he, as the Prime Minister, was not responsible for the contents of a Danish newspaper. The Danish press is not only free, but separate, from the Danish government. Rasmussen’s belief was that the sooner anybody who was unaware of this became aware of it the better. Fast forward to 2012 and we seem to have yet

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Salman Rushdie, A Hero for Our Time – Spectator Blogs

It’s twenty years since I read The Satanic Verses. I didn’t much care for it back then, chiefly, as I recall, because Rushdie’s satirical and comic scenes left me untickled. But today – especially today – is a good moment to read the New Yorker’s excerpt from Rushdie’s forthcoming Fatwa Chronicle, Joseph Anton. If you can’t read it today, read it tomorrow. But do read it. Among other things, it made me want to go back and re-read The Satanic Verses. There are many dates you could choose from which to start a chronicle of our times but, at least in terms of one big question, Valentine’s Day 1989 is

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Channel 4 cancels Tom Holland’s history of Islam, but the extremists will not win

In what may prove to be the most depressingly predictable story of the year, we learn that Channel 4 has chosen to cancel a screening of Tom Holland’s programme ‘Islam: the untold story‘ tomorrow night  because of threats to the author and presenter. If there is a reason why so many stories and facts to do with Islam remain ‘untold’ it is simply because of this. None of the people who threatened Tom Holland even have to mean it — the threat is enough to ensure that Channel 4 don’t go ahead. I don’t blame them, and have seen this happen too many times, in too many different countries, to be

Monday

Shiraz Maher

Citizen Khan says absolutely nothing new

I took the opportunity yesterday to catch up with the BBC’s new comedy ‘Citizen Khan’. Focusing on a Muslim family based in my hometown of Birmingham, it lampoons the trials and tribulations of the self-appointed, self-important, and self-obsessed Mr Khan. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of British Muslim communities will recognise the basic truths on which the programme’s characters are premised. Alia, daughter of the eponymous hero, seems to have provoked the most controversy. Alia is a shrewd young girl, doting before her parents but defiant behind their backs. There are complaints she portrays a disrespectful daughter, affronting not just her myopic parents but also a stylised vision of

Douglas Murray

George Galloway’s awfulness

George Galloway’s awfulness falls into two categories. First there is the serial dictator-licking. This is a man so profligate, not to say promiscuous, in his affections that he has in succession fawned over Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then there is the personal vileness — pretending to be a dirty cat on live television (still, after all these years, impossible to watch), explaining his curious notions of when rape is, and is not, rape, and using vulgarly dismissive terms about disabled people. The strange thing about this is that though the former is, I suggest, in the great scheme of things the worse stuff, it is always the

Saturday

Douglas Murray

The history of Islam is not off-limits

I’ve only just got around to watching Tom Holland’s documentary for Channel 4 from earlier this week: ‘Islam: the untold story.’ It had some good things in it, despite suffering from the two problems all documentaries now suffer from: attention-grabbing statements at the end of segments which are not followed up on, and endless shots of the presenter doing strangely unconnected things (travelling on an elevator, sitting on a bed etc.) But Holland was an engaging and pleasant presenter, and the documentary was something of a landmark in that it finally brought to wider public attention a subject which has been almost completely off-limits in recent years. Because of violence

Tuesday

Matthew Richardson

The marriage plot: The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger reviewed

Few could accuse literary fiction of not doing its best to perk up the US export sector recently. It has been a truly remarkable year. A quick glance at my shelves reveals some wonderful new finds: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, We the Animals by Justin Torres, Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead and recently Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Joining them this summer – although a second novel rather than a debut like the above – is Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds. Exactly like the others, however, The Newlyweds comes already wreathed with praise from across the pond. And well deserved too. To my mind it draws parallels with

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Chariots of fire

When the contestants were lining up for last night’s sensational 5,000 metre race, both of the American contestants waited until the cameras were on them, then crossed themselves and held their hands in prayer. It’s quite some sight to secular Brits, where religious language (even ‘God bless’) and mannerisms have dropped out of our national life and vocabulary. But to quite a few of the Olympians, their faith is of crucial importance, which we have seen this year through their Twitter feeds. Mo Farah, a Muslim, prayed on the track after winning both of his Golds. After Usain Bolt broke the Olympic record for the 100 metres, he did likewise.