It’s time for Muslim agitators to stop suing and start debating

Not long after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich last summer, I wrote a piece in the Daily Telegraph criticising the concentration on the alleged backlash against Muslims. In particular, I attacked an organisation called Tell Mamma, run by Fiyaz Mughal, for appearing to suggest that the unpleasant EDL was as monstrous as al-Qa’eda. Later in the piece, I wrote that, when you publish on such matters, you are all too often ‘subject to “lawfare” — a blizzard of solicitors’ letters claiming damages for usually imagined libels’. So it proved. Along came a solicitor’s letter from the firm of Farooq Bajwa, saying that I had described Mr Mughal as an extremist. Last week, I attended a court hearing. Was the complainant right about the ‘natural and ordinary meaning’ of my words? This week the judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, determined that he was wrong, so we won. Mr Mughal, who is, indeed, not an extremist but seems to be a fool, has now lost two legal cases (including mine) and a PCC case on related matters. What is depressing is the habit among some Muslim groups of seeing ordinary unfavourable comment as something to suppress through the law. Why can’t they debate, not litigate?

The pop star Brian May complains about his rich, ‘selfish’ neighbours doing endless building work all round him in Kensington. What do good West Country people think of their rich neighbour Brian May on his land down there as he tries to prevent badger culls which would save their cattle from TB?

One of the best things that happened to me when young was that I came to know the great philosopher Michael Oakeshott. His philosophical approach was manifest in his life in the most delightful way.