Islam

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

A grim reminder of the Islamist threat?

Yesterday’s attempted car-bombing in Times Square doesn’t really tell us anything beyond that there are sociapaths willing to blow people up, and that sometimes luck – rather than judgement – foils their bloody plans.  But, given the Pakistani Taliban’s claim that they were responsible for the attempt, it does serve as a grim reminder of the poison seeping out of that region.   The question now, and for the next few months, is whether the West will somehow become more engaged inside Pakistan.  It’s notable how British ministers have increasingly namechecked the country when justifying our presence in Afghanistan – but, still, it seems that the Taliban and other Islamist

Saturday

Quentin Letts

No earthly good

Peter Hitchens writes a stern column most weeks in the Mail on Sunday. It expresses disdain not only for today’s politicians but also for those of us who vote for them. The weekly Hitchens can leave even his fellow right-wingers feeling demoralised. He argues that David Cameron’s Tories are no better than Gordon Brown’s clowns. Anyone who swallows campaign promises from Wesmtinster’s stinking fraudsters — a plague on all their second houses — is, in his view, a fool. Hitchens is brave and clever. He writes fluently, with the eye of a shrewd reporter. The best newspaper columnists have always been contrarians, but surely few have been so consistently against

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The new AfPak strategy in action – decapitation, reintegration and reconciliation (DRR)

It’s not quite the “we got him” moment, as when US soldiers unearthed the fugitive Iraqi dictator. But the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top militant commander who is said to be second in command to elusive Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohhamad Omar, may be even more significant. By the time Saddam Hussein had been caught, the US was fighting a different enemy, though the Pentagon leadership had not realised yet. Baradar, who was in charge of the insurgency’s day-to-day operations on behalf of the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, is very much today’s enemy – and his seizure should not be underestimated. Doubts remain as

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

The rebirth of history

We have Francis Fukuyama writing a cover piece for us this week, revisiting his ‘End of History’ thesis. When he first published it, in 1989, he anticipated what was to become a consensus shared by many, including myself: that autocracy was on the way out. Communism had failed, and was being supplanted by the free society (aka the free market). Capitalism was creating wealth and liberty, and from Minsk to Gdansk people wanted it. Eastern Europe was managing a transition brilliantly. Fukuyama¹s thesis seemed to sum up an incredible spirit of optimism. Perhaps this optimism turned to hubris. After 9/11 Tony Blair and George Bush wanted to accelerate history, and

Sunday

Martin Bright

Gita Sahgal: A Statement

Gita Sahgal has now published a statement following her suspension from Amnesty International. I have seen it at Stroppyblog, but please circulate it as widely as possible. Gita has been an active member of Women Against Fundamentalism for many years. Perhaps the publicity around this case will allow their voices to be heard. Amnesty International and Cageprisoners Statement by Gita Sahgal 7 February 2010 This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty

Martin Bright

Amnesty International, Moazzam Begg and the Bravery of Gita Sahgal

It is not often that my cynical jaw drops open at a story in the papers. But the piece on page 13 of the Sunday Times provoked just such a reaction. Congratulations to Richard Kerbaj for blowing the lid on Amnesty International’s relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners, who act as apologists for Islamist totalitarianism. Gita Sahgal, the head of the gender unit at Amnesty International’s international secretariat has been campaigning on women’s issues for decades. She is rightly sick of the lazy alliance between some in the human rights world and radical Islamists. She has therefore blown the whistle on the disgraceful arrangement

Friday

John Bew

Talking to the Taliban | 29 January 2010

After the London conference, it is clear that “talking to the Taliban” will become part of the strategy in Afghanistan. But the conference left a number of important questions about what this means in practice unanswered. Talking to the Taliban is not a new idea. Even though he expelled a British and Irish diplomat for holding secret talks with Taliban in December 2007, President Karzai has become an advocate for such negotiations over the last two years. In the Spring of 2009, Saudi Arabia hosted tentative negotiations between Karzai’s representatives and former Taliban, with links to the current movement. But the idea now has a head of steam behind it.

Sunday

David Blackburn

The burka is a symbol of division, but it should not be banned

On the face of it, Nigel Farage is right: “There is nothing extreme or radical or ridiculous” about banning the burka. It is a manifestation of many British Muslims’ indifference to society; it is an expression of wilful separation and a symbol of a nation riven with cultural division. In the sphere of private behaviour becoming political, the burka engenders intolerance – reactionary Islam’s intolerance of liberal democracy and vice versa. In this atmosphere, writers and politicians of all hues have drawn the same conclusion and there is capital to be extracted (perhaps cynically) by taking the seemingly sensible decision to ban the burka. To do so would be misguided as well

Friday

James Forsyth

The government caves in to the Muslim Council of Britain

The government has caved in its dispute with the Muslim Council of Britain. The government broke off relations with the group over its deputy director-general Daud Abdullah signing the Istanbul Declaration. Indeed, Daud Abdullah even instigated legal action against the then Communities Secretary Hazel Blears over her statements about what the declaration called for. But now Stephen Pollard is reporting that the government is bringing the MCB back in. A DCLG spokesperson tells Pollard that an MCB commitment to examine “their internal processes and ensure that the personal actions of all members, including senior leaders, remain true to the organisation’s agreed policies, avoiding a repeat of the issues which arose

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Fighting terror with the National Security Council

Since September 11, Britain has lost one war and is not winning another. But the question of why this is the case remains depressingly low down the agenda. There is remarkably little interest in why the “British army was defeated in the field in southern Iraq”, to quote Gordon Brown’s and David Miliband’s favourite counter-insurgency expert, David Kilcullen. Today, the Tories launched their green paper on national security with speeches by Pauline Neville-Jones and David Cameron. The document is a mixed bag. But the Tories deserve credit for squarely facing up to the fact that Britain is now an “incubator of extremism and an exporter of terrorism”. They are also

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Islam4UK: the clue’s in the name

Irony of ironies, proselytising liberal and convinced egalitarian, Anjem Choudary, told the Today programme that the banning of Islam4UK, al-Muhajiroun and their aliases is a ‘failure of democracy’. A further irony is that he is right, sort of. Alan Johnson’s decision is understandable but incorrect; the surest way to silence these repugnant extremists and reactionaries is through equality and free debate, even though they hold those principles in contempt. The members of Islam4UK abuse freedom to peddle their reactionary ideals and disregard their duties towards society, but that is no reason to proscribe the group. Unless it entertains something more tangibly serious than marches and hosting lunatics on its discussion boards, Islam4UK and its ilk

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Oh dear, Gordon’s done it again

The knicker-bomber must love this. Twice Gordon Brown has jumped on the bandwagon and bounced straight off on both occasions. Sky News reports that the UK did not pass vital information to the US, despite the claims of a Downing Street spokesman. Here’s the key section: ‘During a briefing to journalists today, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “There is no suggestion the UK passed intelligence to the US that they did not act on.” But Sky’s political correspondent Joey Jones said it had been an “awful” briefing. “He tried to clear things up but only succeeded in muddying the waters still further,” Jones said. “After he read Downing Street’s statement,

Monday

John Stokes

Overcoming America’s intelligence woes

The failed terrorist attack on a North West Airlines plane last month has reignited the debate about just what can be done to improve the performance of America’s intelligence agencies. Despite spending close to $100 billion since the attacks of 9/11 nine years ago, it has become clear in the aftermath of the failed attack that all the old problems that were identified after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still remain: Intelligence is not shared effectively and the analysis of available data remains weak. To the reformers inside the intelligence community, none of this is exactly news. As money poured in after 9/11 there was

Saturday

David Blackburn

Why profiling is essential

It is a truth, yet to be universally acknowledged, that the overwhelming majority of global terrorism is committed by radical Muslims. However, the Guardian reports that Whitehall has reached that conclusion and passenger profiling is “in the mix” of the latest airport security review. Thank God, sense prevails at last. The previous airport review, conducted in the aftermath of the liquid bomb plot, decided against profiling. What followed was a fatuous politically correct concoction. Even pilots’ toothpaste was examined; one pilot commented: “If I want to kill everyone (on board) I don’t faff around with plastic explosives, I point the nose at the ground”. Such determined absurdity should be behind us. Alas, not everyone gets

Thursday

Daniel Korski

The “sleeper issue” of 2010: Yemen

As Melanie Phillips says in her article for this week’s issue of the magazine, the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab highlights the role of other, less frequently discussed, countries in Islamist terror. One such country is Yemen, where Abdulmutallab is thought to have trained at an Al Qaeda camp. The US believes there may be a few hundred al Qaeda fighters in Yemen, centered on a group of key network leaders who are operating a number of camps.   Yemen has slowly been getting more international attention. A few weeks ago I was meant to go on Al Jazeera, but my appearance was cancelled at the last minute because, I

John Stokes

The failures of American intelligence

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 succeeded because US intelligence failed to bring the various pieces of information together to prevent them. The attempted terrorist attack on a North West Airlines plane headed for Detroit almost succeeded because US intelligence failed to bring different pieces of information together that would have prevented the bomber getting on the plane. Between 2001 and today, the US has spent around $40 billion on counter terrorist improvements and even more on trying to improve intelligence. And yet, nothing much seems to have changed. In the current case, there was intelligence that the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda was using a ‘Nigerian’ as a bomber. There

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The NYT: The Detroit bomber was radicalised in London

It is a depressing fact that the Detroit bomber appears to have been radicalised in London. Today, the New York Times takes an extensive look at the bomber’s radicalisation in London. As the paper, which is not prone to hyperbole, says: “Investigators are now, in fact, turning a sharper and retrospective eye to the passage in Mr. Abdulmutallab’s life that began immediately after his summer in Sana, Yemen, in 2005, when he enrolled as a $25,000-a-year mechanical engineering student at University College London. In recent days, officials in Washington and London have said they are focusing on the possibility that his London years, including his possible contacts with radical Muslim

Tuesday

Martin Bright

What on earth was Daud Abdullah doing on Channel 4 News?

What a bizarre decision by Channel 4 News to invite the Muslim Council of Britain’s Daud Abdullah on to talk about the attempt to arrest the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni for her involvement in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. And even more peculiar that Jon Snow tried to stop the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard raising the issue that Abdullah had signed the Istanbul Declaration calling for attacks not just on Israel and but on British forces perceived to have supported the .  The Deputy Secretary General of the MCB is currently the reason his organisation is out in the cold. Communities Secretary John Denham is sympathetic to the MCB, but

Monday

Daniel Korski

What do Muslims think?

Coffee House readers sometimes complain that we do not talk enough about Muslims and Islam. I have certainly shied away from the subject, fearing that emotion and prejudice, rather than argumentation and empirical data, would dominate the debate. I don’t write about Christians, Jews or Buddhists, so why focus on Muslims? At any rate, I don’t like talking about collective groups, much as I prefer not to be talked about based solely on my heritage. But now a new study called Muslims in Europe allows for an empirically-based debate about sentiments across a number of Muslim communities. Based on interviews and surveys in 11 European cities, it presents some interesting

Friday

Martin Bright

Rediscovering Paul Berman

Six years ago I wrote a review for the Observer about Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism, a quite brilliant polemic about the way the legitimate liberal desire to overturn the conventional or the bourgeois can so often turn to murderous terror. I recognised at the time that it was an extraordinary book, but I couldn’t quite accept his final conclusions, which seemed to elide different forms of barbarism so that Palestinian suicide bombers became equated with the genocide of the Nazi death camps. I still think it is important to make distinctions between the geographical, cultural and historical specifics of individual patterns of atrocity. This is not to say there