Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
I am sorry to hear about Malcolm Rifkind, though less sorry to hear about Jack Straw, whose ‘outside interests’ I have had cause to write about here before. How often do MPs fall for this sort of sting? Every six months? Every nine? Think of all the ones that don’t make it as far as
Two years ago the Danish writer Helle Brix helped found the Lars Vilks Committee. The group of media figures from left and right came together to support the Swedish artist who has been under constant threat of death since drawing a picture of Mohammed in 2007. ‘We agreed that Mr Vilks should not be alone
Another week and another completely random attack by a gunman hunting down cartoonists before inexplicably heading to the local synagogue. My guess is that events in Copenhagen yesterday have already been put down in many quarters to what President Obama describes as ‘a random bunch of folks’ being targeted by somebody who has ‘misunderstood’ what
It looks like this year’s Simon Hughes prize (awarded each year to the non-Muslim who does the weirdest impression of holding Islamic principle) must go to Lord Woolf. In a speech yesterday at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies the former Lord Chief Justice chose to explain why Muslim sensitivities should be especially respected. He also
Jeremy Bowen’s half-hour long interview with Bashar al-Assad is being heavily trailed by the BBC this morning. And while it has little that is new it does provide an interesting insight into the Syrian President’s current situation. The main story from it is Assad’s confirmation that there is some line of communication between the Syrian
In the aftermath of last month’s Paris atrocities there was a remarkable piece in one of Denmark’s leading papers signed by more than a dozen prominent Danish Muslims. It said that France, like Denmark, is a country where there is freedom of speech and freedom of religion and that writers and cartoonists had every right,
I have never had any particularly strong views on Tristram Hunt other (naturally) than finding it bleakly hilarious that he should be the Labour party’s Parliamentary representative for Stoke. But a point needs to be made in his favour. The shadow education secretary was on Andrew Marr’s sofa this morning and found himself asked six
You can tell when a battle has been won. Read the Pink News or any other gay news site and you will see that there are almost no stories left to report. A politician in Northern Ireland may be caught expressing an opinion on gay marriage which was the view of all mainstream UK political
Over Christmas I finally got around to reading Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth. I cannot recommend this book – newly translated from the German – highly enough. It challenges and indeed changes nearly all received wisdom about the leading figure behind the genocide of European Jews during World War II. The title of course
I have spent most of the last fortnight debating Islam and blasphemy and wanted to take the opportunity to put down a few unwritten thoughts. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities most of the people who thought the journalists and cartoonists in some sense ‘had it coming to them’ kept their heads down.
Shin Dong-hyuk really shouldn’t need defending. The thirty-two year old was born in, and grew up in, the North Korean gulag system. And as he has related in his book Escape from Camp 14, and in public appearances, what he saw on an average day in his childhood constituted more horror than most people will
On Wednesday the Home Secretary made a statement in the House of Commons about the terrorist attacks last week in Paris. Here is part of the Hansard transcript of the resulting debate: Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con): Is the Home Secretary aware that when the Prophet Mohammed moved from Mecca to Medina all
The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have
As I write a siege is ongoing in a Kosher shop in Paris. In France, Belgium and across Europe in recent years, Jews have repeatedly been the targets of Islamist attack. They always are. Last year saw the largest upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crime on record even in the UK. But it is the continent
listen to ‘Douglas Murray discusses the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine’ on audioBoom
Jeremy Thorpe by Michael Bloch Little, Brown, pp.606, £25 The back story of Michael Bloch’s biography of Jeremy Thorpe is a story in itself. The book’s appearance, in the same month as its subject’s death, is only possible because it has been on ice for many years. In the 1990s the author had numerous meetings with
The £31 million al-Sweady Inquiry is in. And it describes claims that up to 20 Iraqis were killed and mutilated by British troops after a battle in 2004 as “without foundation”: ‘Sir Thayne Forbes said Iraqi detainees who alleged they were tortured and abused – and subjected to mock executions – had given evidence that
Wow. Anyone who still harboured the idea that Australia was led by no-nonsense, common sense speaking politicians should look away now. Here is Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia, talking about the motivations of the man who held a shop full of people hostage earlier this week and then murdered two of them: ‘The point
Yesterday it was Sydney. Today it is Peshawar. Yesterday a coffee shop. Today a school. Yesterday a lone gunman. Today a gang of them. If anybody wondered about the global and diffuse nature of the challenge that Islamic fundamentalism poses, the last 24 hours have given another demonstration of the problem. Yet what is amazing, after
On Thursday I was on the BBC’s ‘This Week’ to talk about the CIA and torture. It is, for many reasons, perhaps the most gruesome subject possible. And not just because of the hideous allegations involved, but also because it is one of those subjects which people wantonly lose their reason over. Like a small
