Islam

On this week’s episode, we discuss how elections across the world have been taken advantage of to give more power to corrupt leaders. We also talk about the international persecution of Muslims, and ask, why don’t young Corbynites care about anti-Semitism? While the world has been reeling from news of Cambridge Analytica’s political interference, two academics have been following the trail of shady election rigging across the world that go deeper than social media. Professor Nic Cheeseman, at the University of Birmingham, and Dr Brian Klaas at the LSE, have visited developing democracies from Asia, to Africa, to Europe. In this week’s cover piece, they explain the extent of election

Anti-Christian persecution, for so long a great untold story, has started to gain the world’s attention. But the suffering of Christian communities, from Syria to Nigeria to China, is part of an even broader phenomenon. Religious conflict is on the rise across the globe, with ancient tensions being raised by new political methods. And in many countries — Sri Lanka, India, the Central African Republic and elsewhere — it’s Muslims who have the most reason to fear violence. In Burma, they may even have been victims of genocide. That, at any rate, is what UN officials are trying to investigate after a wave of brutality which has forced 700,000 Rohingya

Is Allah gay? The eventuality – as Jeeves might say – would seem to be a remote one. If such a being as Allah did exist and was gay then no harm could come from stating the fact. If such a being as Allah exists and is not gay then Allah would presumably be big enough to shrug off such insinuations. And if – and I only mention the possibility – such a being as Allah does not exist at all, then it really is neither here nor there whether he, she, they, ze or zir is alleged to be gay, bi, trans or anything else. Certainly none of this

Justin Welby is right to take a stand against his predecessor, Rowan Williams’ most controversial announcement: that Britain should introduce sharia law. Ten years ago last month, Williams suggested parts of Islamic sharia law should be incorporated into British law. He argued that some kind of “constructive accommodation” was not only possible but desirable to better integrate British Muslims. The idea provoked almost universal condemnation, and now Williams’s successor has thankfully knocked down Williams’ poorly thought through stance. This isn’t to say, of course, that Muslims, mosques and halal food are not all welcome in Britain—diversity makes us richer. But law is another matter. Reconciling any two legal frameworks within

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have

In normal times, the reported return of 400 Isis fighters to Britain would be the biggest story out there. But with policymakers preoccupied by Brexit, and the press examining the sexual culture of Westminster, this news has not received the attention it deserves. The return of these fighters has profound implications. The security services are struggling to keep up with all the possible terrorists at large. Notably, Andrew Parker, the director-general of MI5, has warned that plots are being devised at the fastest rate he can remember in his 30-year career. Though he stressed that the security services have prevented seven attacks since March, he also said they cannot foil

For many years, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, has been one of my closest enemies. In Switzerland and France this Islamist dauphin had a slightly hard time establishing his reputation. This was not just due to his poor scholarship (the basis of which lay in a fawning book about his grandad) but also to his double-speak in public debate and (at best) borderline Islamist views. In France these views were most famously exposed in a television debate with Nicolas Sarkozy in which Ramadan infamously could not bring himself to condemn the stoning of adulterers outright, merely calling for a ‘moratorium’ on the punishment. In Britain,

‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’ is the name of the latest report by Aid to the Church in Need. Unfortunately, there is no need for that question mark in the title. Both the persecution and the oblivion are facts. Christians have been victims of the genocide in Isis-controlled parts of Iraq and Syria. In 2011, there were 150,000 Christians in Aleppo and now there are 35,000. Persecution rises in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Sudan and Iran. In Nigeria, 1.8 million people have been displaced by Boko Haram. In India, there is much more harassment of Christians since Narendra Modi came to power in 2015. In China, there are now thought

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like them, to ‘do our duty by Britain’. She said the government planned to make it easier for local authorities to build council houses. On the eve of the conference, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in an interview with the Sun sketched out four ‘red lines’ that he said should apply to Brexit. These included a transition period that must not last ‘a second more’ than two years. His stipulations went beyond anything agreed by the government, but Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether he was ‘unsackable’. Later she said: ‘I