On their knees in the Temple

1:29pm

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s infamous lecture on sharia was the launch event of a series of discussions at Temple Church under the heading ‘Islam in English law’. The very title of this series might well raise an eyebrow among those who believe naively that the law of the land is the law for all minorities, since it assumes by definition that the extent to which Islam may or may not be accommodated by English law is an issue to be discussed. Now Temple Church – the church of the Inner and Middle Temple, the Inns of Court -- is publicising its next event in this series:

Can Moral or Religious Obligation ever justify the Use of Force Inadmissible under Secular Law?

The line up is as follows:

Chair: Sir James Craig

(Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

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Grave of academe

1:00pm

For a flavour of the thuggish atmosphere on campus in Britain today as renewed attempts are made to introduce an academic boycott of Israel, this guest post on Harry’s Place  (along with some of the readers' comments) provides a shocking taster.

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What he never learned about Belfast

10:14am

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff and a key architect of the Northern Ireland appeasement process, is obviously not quite as aloof as he appears. In the current issue of Prospect, he has been stung into writing a riposte to the profound criticism of that process levelled by Dean Godson, Charles Moore, myself and others. Naturally, he carefully labels it from the start a ‘right-wing critique’, thus warning everyone that it is beyond the pale (see my post below for an analysis of this mindset). However, he singles out only one element of the criticism: that the process destroyed the moderate parties in Northern Ireland and brought the extremes to power. Apart from denying this by blaming the moderate politicians themselves, his reasoning on this one point is deeply troubling. He writes:

Any peace process must

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Questions for the west

9:24am

Here is a remarkable article by an Iranian, Daniel Shaysteh, a former Muslim who has now converted to Christianity. He describes a childhood upbringing in which his religion taught him to hate those who were not Muslims, and how he eventually came to reject Islam altogether. What jumps out of the article, however, is his scathing condemnation of the west for failing to grasp what he knows from first-hand experience to be the truth: 

Why are some leftist groups and individuals standing alongside radical Islamic leaders in order to fight democratic values in the West?  Why are many western leaders, politicians, media and various groups silent towards the threat of Islam against their societies?  What is keeping these people quiet in such a significant time when a religious group challenges not just their democratic values

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The spinning compass

5:13pm

Much is understandably being made of the political ramifications of the quite remarkable mess Gordon Brown is now in over first his decision to scrap the 10p tax rate and then double back on himself by cushioning the blow for assorted vulnerable groups. First he denies there are to be many losers – according to the Telegraph he

even assured Tony Blair last year that scrapping the 10p rate would hurt only a few thousand workers, not the 5.3 million even the Treasury now accepts will lose out

then he performs a U-turn but announces a rescue scheme of such arcane complexity no-one can understand it (but you can be sure the benefits of it will melt away under scrutiny). And the only reason he did this at all, as David Cameron observed in the Commons exchanges today, was...

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The open society and its enemies

10:55pm

 

I am following with no little fascination the controversy over David Edgar’s article in the Guardian last Saturday, which has upset certain left-wing folk by suggesting that writers such as Christopher Hitchens, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Andrew Antony, Martin Bright, David Mamet and Ed Husain are but the latest to have deserted the left and moved to the right. Oh -- and me.
This list is in itself absurd. As Andrew Anthony has pointed out, in renouncing seventh century Islamism, Ed Husain has moved (insofar as these terms still have any meaning) from right to left. As for several of the others, they have merely understood that one cannot be a true progressive and at the same time support the continuation of certain tyrannical regimes that enslave and murder their populations, even if they...

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