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.
Immediately after the 7/7 bombings the then police-chief Brian Paddick told a press conference: ‘Islam and terrorism do not go together.’ Now, after Woolwich, the Prime Minister has said, ‘There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.’ Even after all these years our leaders continue to make this terrible mistake. Politicians or
Similar attacks in recent years include the beheading of a Dutch film-maker, Theo van Gogh, on a street in Amsterdam in 2004 and the killing of French soldiers by Mohammed Merah in Toulouse. Over recent years, those who have warned that such attacks would come here have been attacked as ‘racists’, ‘fascists’ and — most
I thought readers might be interested in this piece in the current print edition of the magazine. It is my review of a very interesting new book on Edmund Burke, Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet by the MP Jesse Norman. I much recommend it. Those who haven’t read Burke before will, I am sure, be
Nigel Farage has just met one of the most fascinating aspects of modern politics. He was surrounded in Edinburgh by left-wing ‘anti-fascists’ shouting ‘Racist scum. Go back to England’. The same mob also screamed ‘scum’ repeatedly at the top of their voice until they made him leave. This is probably the best demonstration so far
Edmund Burke is one of the most difficult thinkers to write about. His philosophy defies easy summary. His career, while noble, was not glittering. Many details that he exhausted himself over — such as the impeachment of Warren Hastings — were arcana before he was dead. And hardest of all is that Burke’s prose style
The verdicts have been delivered in the Operation Bullfinch trial. Seven of the nine men have been found ‘guilty’. The case involved the highly organised sexual and physical abuse of underage girls in the ‘care’ system. This was carried out by a gang of men in Oxfordshire over the course of nearly a decade. As
It was Dean Howells who first said, ‘The problem for a critic is not making enemies but keeping them.’ On this account I have been diligent and fortunate in my life so far. There is Nick Griffin of the BNP, for instance, who attacks me for many things including being ‘a cheer-leader for multi-racialism’ and,
I thought readers might be interested in this piece by me in today’s Mail. It is on the appalling decision by Stephen Hawking to boycott a conference in Israel just because it is in Israel.
You do not need to have read the book or even seen a film adaptation to feel a thrill at the word ‘Gatsby’. More than a novel, a film or a character, ‘Gatsby’ is an aspiration. The golden age of jazz, cocktails and evening dress, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is one of those works which
One of the most striking divides in the left/right political debate is this. Those on the right disagree with people on the left. They find left-wing opinions misguided, incorrect or otherwise wrong. But they tend not to assume that their opponents are evil. This favour is rarely reciprocated. The Harvard professor and historian Niall Ferguson
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal (Europe) I have a piece on the rise of UKIP. It is about hedgehogs, foxes and Nigel Farage. And it suggests that something important is happening in our politics. Finally.
Abdul Hakim Murad is the Islamic name of a convert to Islam called Tim Winters. He is a lecturer and tutor and director of studies at Wolfson College, Cambridge University. Over recent years he was the sort of fellow who was forever being produced as a ‘moderate’, enlightened Muslim scholar. I always had doubts about
I am pleased that Peter Oborne concedes that his co-author David Morrison was ‘foolish’ and ‘clumsy’ in his statements. Perhaps Morrison was indeed attempting ‘to be as accurate as he could about what he understood to be the facts’. But that is a statement about the understanding of Mr Oborne’s co-author, not a statement about
It is more than ten years since I first sat down with members of the Syrian opposition. Back then they included real moderates, but even these didn’t predict a bloodless transition. ‘We will have to unite the country against the Alawites,’ I remember one saying, referring to the minority from which the Assad dynasty comes.
Dirty tricks against UKIP by the establishment are not a new phenomenon. Though in recent days the Conservative party have been found engaging in them, there are far more striking examples from the recent past. On 25 May 2001 the Spectator published a piece by Norman Tebbit that deserves to be far better known. Tebbit
Last week I recorded an edition of Hardtalk for the BBC which has gone out today. It is a discussion with Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), on the future of nuclear weaponry. The discussion is available on iplayer here. A couple of observations. Firstly, I seem to have
Has President Ahmadinejad ever denied the Holocaust? David Morrison, co-author with Peter Oborne of a new apologia on the Iranian ‘government’, appears to think that he has not. In a bizarre and disgraceful interview with the Telegraph, alongside his co-author, Morrison recites the main claim of their book – which is that the Iranian regime
According to one of his family members Tamerlan Tsarnaev was, among other things, ‘angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.’ His efforts to refute this charge included planting bombs in the middle of a family sports event in Boston, killing – among others – an eight year old boy. The case brings
I have been in the US over recent weeks, during the period of the Boston bombings and the hunt for the perpetrators. It may surprise some British readers to know that although American public debate is undoubtedly wider and more robust than in Britain, even America displays denial and deflection when it turns out that
The Philpott case has already turned into a row about media reporting. You can see why. It is so much easier to argue about a newspaper front-page than to talk about the terrible underclass this country has created. In a nutshell our problem is this. For hard-working couples, having children in 21st century Britain is
