World

Khadija Khan

Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules

Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and generosity. But for others – especially those who flout fasting rules in Muslim-majority countries – it can be a period of suffering and persecution. Liberal Muslims and those from religious minorities can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ‘holy month’. They face harsh punishments, exclusion, and seclusion for offending religious sensibilities. Liberal Muslims can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ”holy month’ Several young men were arrested in Kano, northern Nigeria, earlier this month for failing to observe the Ramadan fast. Those selling

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Is Friedrich Merz floundering already?

Friedrich Merz promised to do things differently. Ahead of the country’s federal election last month, the likely next chancellor of Germany said he had a ‘clear plan for Germany’s economic future’. From day one in office, he wanted to be seen to enact the change so many Germans had voted for. But, held to ransom by the election’s losers, his centre-right Union is already being forced into so many compromises that Merz may turn out to be just as ineffective and unpopular as his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Merz wasn’t off to a bad start. Okay, most Germans tell pollsters that they are sceptical that he’ll be a good chancellor, but

Jim Lawley

How Spain is trying to dodge spending more on defence

Spain’s defence spending, at a mere 1.28 per cent of its GDP, lags behind all other Nato members. While most European Union countries have already reached the target of 2 per cent that was agreed back in 2014, at the present rate of progress Spain won’t get there until 2029. Such a leisurely approach is no longer tenable. President Trump has proposed 5 per cent as the appropriate benchmark for defence expenditure, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, is demanding urgent rearmament in Europe and Nato is expected to raise the target to well above 3 per cent at its summit in June. Suddenly it looks as

Ukraine

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Putin has set a trap for the Ukraine ceasefire plan

Vladimir Putin has set his conditions for Donald Trump’s ‘unconditional’ ceasefire: Kyiv must not mobilise or train troops, nor receive military aid, then Ukraine must ultimately accept a final peace deal that eliminates the ‘root causes’ of the conflict – i.e., which erases Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Kremlin’s terms remain the same as they were three years ago: Ukrainians must cede four partially occupied regions to Russia. He also wants Kyiv to dismantle its independent government and surrender the right to choose its alliances. Surprisingly for Ukraine, Trump decided to get harsher on Russia too Putin has no reason to end the bloodshed until his imperialistic terms are met. His troops

Robin Ashenden

Trump’s war on Europe should not surprise anyone

Has there been a more cataclysmic year than 2025 for US-Europe relations? It started with US Vice President J.D. Vance’s ‘sermon’ to EU leaders at the Munich security conference last month – in which he berated Western Europe for its policies on immigration and free speech. The year so far has also taken in the danger of the Nato alliance falling apart after 76 years of peace in Western Europe, with the White House apparently tilting towards Russia and Trump demanding that members of the alliance such as Germany, France and the UK massively up their defence spending. This week, as the Trump regime imposes tariffs on Europe and Europe

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is Putin really open to a ceasefire with Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin is apparently open to a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. But is he really? Just like that, the response that America, Ukraine and its Western allies had been waiting for has arrived. Speaking this afternoon in a joint press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the Russian President commented for the first time on America’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the conflict. ‘We agree with the proposal to stop military actions,’ he said. The truce, he said, should lead to ‘long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of the crisis’.  As with many statements which turn out to be too good to be true, the Russian

China

America

Europe

John Keiger John Keiger

Defence cooperation with France would be a bad idea for Britain

Donald Trump’s recent decision to deny Ukraine access to American intelligence data in the war against Russia has concentrated minds on how the US could restrict Britain’s defence capability, from F-35 stealth jets to its independent nuclear deterrent. Some fears are well-founded. Others, such as the recent suggestion by a former French ambassador to the UK that a ‘dual key’ controls Britain’s submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, are a myth.  The idea is growing in some quarters that now is the moment for Britain to switch away from the US to Europe for defence equipment cooperation. One need not look too far to detect its motivation or to see its naivety. Like

Robin Ashenden

Help, I’ve become a news junkie!

I’ve always been something of a news addict, but recent events in America and Ukraine have turned me into the kind of junkie films get made about. ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ an affliction you once sniggered at in others, is now sweeping the world faster than Covid-19, and is oddly easy, at the moment, to fall into. Speaking of the White House’s pivot to Russia and apparent abandonment of Europe, a friend said it was like ‘sitting in an articulated lorry being driven by someone who’s just downed an entire quart of bourbon.’ Another remarked: ‘There’s this complete, jaw-dropping disbelief at what’s happening. Each time I turn on the TV for

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Will the EU ever get tough on defence?

European leaders are in Brussels today for an emergency summit on defence, and the future of both Ukraine and the continent. In a further attempt to hash out a peace plan for Ukraine, the 27 EU heads of state are joined by Volodymyr Zelensky. Arriving this morning, Zelensky declared, ‘It’s great we are not alone’. As part of today’s agenda, members of the bloc are expected to endorse Ursula von der Leyen’s ReArm Europe plan – which will make €150 billion (£125 billion) available in loans for members to boost defence spending. The summit will also likely discuss French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to extend his country’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ to its

Yesterday

Elisabeth Dampier

Germany is heading towards an immigration catastrophe

The German Social Democratic party (SPD) has published its working paper on immigration. It calls for half a million more migrants every year, no deportation of illegal immigrants unless they are extremely violent, voting rights for foreigners, automatic citizenship after 25 years, and a new ministry for immigration and integration. You would think the left-wing party was in no position to make demands. After all, the SPD led the coalition government which lost the last election, when it failed to be one of the top two parties for the first time since the 19th century. But the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, which won the most votes in the election, has

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Why the Jaffar Express was hijacked in Pakistan

The Jaffar Express, a train with over 400 people on board, was hijacked in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Tuesday, leaving at least 21 passengers and 33 attackers dead. The separatist militia, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), claimed responsibility. BLA militants bombed the railway track and then hurled rockets and opened gunfire on the train before getting on board and holding the passengers hostage at a remote and isolated junction. The group’s immediate demand was for its members to be released from prison, but Pakistan’s security forces launched an operation early on Wednesday, and ended the hijacking by the end of the day. The military claims all of the civilian casualties took

Terry Barnes

Is a criminal gang orchestrating anti-Semitism in Australia?

In late January, Australians were convulsed out of their summer holiday torpor by what appeared to be an elaborate anti-Semitic terror plot. Following a series of vandalism and firebomb attacks on synagogues, and cars and private property in suburbs with significant Jewish populations, details of the New South Wales police’s discovery of a caravan laden with plastic explosive were leaked to the media. This caravan was found parked in a street on Sydney’s rural fringe. The explosive had no detonators, but reportedly was accompanied by plans of Sydney’s Great Synagogue, which is located in a busy and narrow city centre street that would have magnified greatly the destruction and casualties

Michael Evans

The problem with putting US nukes in Poland

Nukes are becoming a big issue for Poland. One way or another, both the Polish president and prime minister want their country to host tactical nuclear weapons as a deterrent against President Putin’s Russia. In the latest, but by no means the first, statement on this question, President Andrzej Duda has revealed he recently discussed locating American tactical nukes in Poland with Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy for Ukraine. In an interview with the Financial Times, Duda said: ‘I think it’s not only that the time has come but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here.’ At the same time, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister and

Thursday

Paul Wood

Massacre of the innocents, saving endangered languages & Gen Z’s ‘Boom Boom’ aesthetic

37 min listen

This week: sectarian persecution returns Paul Wood, Colin Freeman and Father Benedict Kiely write in the magazine this week about the religious persecution that minorities are facing across the world from Syria to the Congo. In Syria, there have been reports of massacres with hundreds of civilians from the Alawite Muslim minority targeted, in part because of their association with the fallen Assad regime. Reports suggest that the groups responsible are linked to the new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani). For some, the true face of the country’s new masters has been revealed. Whether the guilty men are punished will tell us what kind of

Owen Matthews

What Vladimir Putin really wants from Ukraine

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have very different negotiating styles. Trump lines up his offer in advance, browbeating all the parties on his own side into compliance before slapping his bottom line on the table. Putin, by contrast, is a haggler. He loads his proposals with superstructure intended to be jettisoned in the course of getting to yes. Or to put it another way, what Putin says he wants and what he realistically expects to get are two different things. On the face of it, Russia’s first response to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine contain several major deal-breakers that the Ukrainians could never swallow. First and foremost,

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

More booze won’t save France’s dying village life

Reach for the pastis, Jacques. A law is making its way through the French parliament to relax alcohol licensing, to make it easier to open bars and cafes in French towns and villages. French politicians are desperate to try anything to stimulate commerce in villages that are dying, the life sucked out of them by shopping centres with everything just five minutes away in the car. That more bars will be helpful is likely to be wishful thinking. The days when the Café de la Paix was at the centre of village life are long passé. It is easy to over-sentimentalise the role of the café in France’s 40,000 small

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland isn’t out of Trump’s firing line just yet

The Taoiseach Micheal Martin’s White House encounter with Donald Trump was controversial even before it was announced. Before any invitation had been extended, Sinn Fein said they were going to boycott the event in a show of solidarity with the people of Ukraine and Gaza and as a sign of their commitment ‘to humanity’. The People Before Profit party said Martin was endorsing America’s role in a genocide and Labour leader Ivana Bacik insisted the Taoiseach take the opportunity to publicly scold Trump on Ukraine, Gaza and his perceived failures to take action on climate change. But Martin is a more experienced politician than that and knew there was only

Matthew Dennison

Norway’s eccentric royals make Britain’s look mundane

It’s not hard to see why the 93-year-old, wheelchair-bound Princess Astrid of Norway might feel that now is the moment to remind Norwegians ‘I can still be useful for something’, as she did in a rare interview last month. The Princess, who is the sister of 88-year-old King Harald, was awarded an honorary pension by the government two decades ago; last year, her official diary shrank to 20 engagements. But 2024 was not kind to Norway’s ruling house. More than once, the royal family was reduced to a single working member: Harald’s heir, Crown Prince Haakon. Norway’s monarchy, once notable for its remarkable popularity, is now beset by crises, including

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Trump wants Putin to win

It is meet, right and our bounden duty to begin any column about Ukraine with a vigorous expression of the columnist’s distaste for the President and Vice-President of the United States. Consider that done. Donald Trump is a slob, a bully and a liar: a person of low character. J.D. Vance is a nasty and morally confused little snake: a thug’s venomous sidekick. It is also an appropriate preliminary courtesy to state without hesitation that Volodymyr Zelensky is a brave and inspirational warrior whose personal qualities set his country firmly on the path of resistance to an unprovoked attack. Done. And, finally, it is necessary if superfluous to repeat that Vladimir

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Spies in Norfolk, rats in Birmingham and Denmark ditches letter deliveries

Home Three Bulgarians were found guilty of spying for Russia as part of a cell that plotted to kidnap and kill targets in Europe, under a fellow Bulgarian who lived in a former guest house in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The court heard that the spies reported to Austrian-born Jan Marsalek, who sought refuge in Moscow after the collapse in 2020 of Wirecard, the German payments company he helped run. Walgreens Boots Alliance, the US owner of Boots the chemist, was taken over by a private equity firm, Sycamore Partners. The government introduced the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will enable councils to seize land. The cost of a first-class stamp

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Trump has breathed new life into Davos Man

So bad was the debut of this Labour government that many think it has already failed. But now, I suggest, there is at least a chance it will succeed. If it leads industrial recovery based on defence and security, tackles the flawed basis of large areas of welfare spending and sweeps away planning restrictions to build more, it will have confronted problems which the Tories evaded for years. Labour can do this, of course, only if it abjures the beliefs that Sir Keir Starmer has espoused throughout his political career, but that seems to be exactly what his managers, led by Morgan McSweeney, are now (rightly) forcing upon him. Rupert

Paul Wood

Massacre of the innocents: the return of sectarian persecution in Syria

No one covers up their war crimes any more. They film them, celebrate them, post them on X. So we have videos from Syria this week showing Islamist fighters making terrified Alawite men get on their hands and knees and howl like dogs. In one video, the victims crawl along a street spattered with blood and gore as a bearded gunman clubs them with a wooden pole. The camera comes to rest on half a dozen bodies. Then we hear rifle shots. There has been a massacre of Alawites in Syria this past week: hundreds of civilians have been killed. The killings were perpetrated by the armed groups that put

Colin Freeman

Why does the beheading of Christians not make headlines?

The Congolese chapter of Islamic State has a ruthless way of stopping outsiders reporting their presence to the authorities. Under the edicts of their founder, Jamil Mukulu, who once lived as a cleric in London, anyone who strays across them in their forest hideouts should be killed on sight. ‘Slaughter him or her, behead them immediately,’ Mukulu once commanded. ‘Never give it a second thought, do not hesitate.’ His acolytes take him at his word, even when it’s not just one hapless villager who runs into them, but dozens. Last month, they beheaded 70 Christians in Mayba in the eastern Congo, according to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church

The Spectator

The West must not look away from what’s happening in Syria

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has many talents. But his understanding of Middle Eastern politics leaves much to be desired. Last month he welcomed Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on to the podcast he hosts with the former Conservative minister Rory Stewart. Reflecting on the encounter afterwards in a newspaper column, Campbell was anxious to give the ‘gently smiling President’ the benefit of the doubt. He was ‘definitely saying a lot of the right things’. There was, Campbell acknowledged – ‘one big blot on the Syrian landscape’ – the ubiquity of men smoking. But otherwise everything seemed in order. It was the case, he said, that ‘virtually everyone

Wednesday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Losing Kursk is a big blow to Zelensky

After eight months of fighting on Russian soil, Ukrainian troops are pulling back from the Kursk region. This morning, Russian forces raised their flag over Sudzha and are now closing in on the last 50 square miles of Ukrainian holdouts. The retreat couldn’t come at a worse time for Kyiv – just as a ceasefire and potential peace deal are on the table. Zelensky had hoped to trade the Kursk salient for Ukrainian land in negotiations. Now, that leverage is almost gone. Russian troops, reinforced by North Koreans, have been steadily clawing back the 500 square miles of Russian territory seized by Ukraine last August. But the real breakthrough came

Owen Matthews

Why Russia should agree to a ceasefire – and five reasons Putin might not

The main achievement of the US-Ukrainian talks in Jeddah was to produce a ceasefire document that Russia might actually want to sign. A long list of Ukrainian red lines – such as a partial ceasefire in the air and sea only, and security guarantees before any ceasefire was implemented – were swept aside. What’s on the table is essentially an unconditional ceasefire on all fronts, initially limited to thirty days. Putin now needs to decide whether it’s in Russia’s interests to accept. There are six reasons why he should sign the Jeddah deal – and five reasons he may not: Why Putin should agree to the deal:  Relations with Washington

Sergey Radchenko

Putin can still defeat Ukraine

After Ukraine accepted America’s 30-day ceasefire proposal, all eyes are on Russia’s reaction. Will Vladimir Putin – who, as President Trump has incredulously claimed, has all the cards, and at the same time no cards at all – go along with the US proposal, or choose to snub it? To answer this question, it is important to understand what Putin is trying to do. On the one hand, he did not spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this war, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, and put Russia’s entire economy on a war footing in order to claim a devastated strip of territory in eastern Donbas. Putin wants to reassert effective

Niko Vorobyov

Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is catching up with him

I saw my first murder scene in Manila. On the evening of the 22 January 2018, a pair of assassins on motorbikes rode up to the scrap metal dealer Manny ‘Buddy’ Wagan and blasted him twice in the head. I didn’t witness the killing itself but arrived with my fixer just in time to see a passerby lighting a candle in honour of the deceased, the flickering flame reflected in the pool of blood, brain and skull spread across the pavement.  Manny’s death was one of up to 30,000 such slayings over the course of President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year rule of the Philippines between 2016 and 2022. Duterte had declared a war against drugs

Jane Stannus

Is Canada doing enough to stop the US trade war?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is beginning to look like a case in point. On Monday, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, with 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota likely to be impacted. Trump responded with all-caps outrage, raising the March 12 tariff on steel and aluminium coming into the United States from Canada from 25 to 50 per cent — a threat that would mean curtains for Ontario’s auto sector. How, asked the US president,