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Society

Tuesday

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

A memo for Dr Ben Carson: Islam and Islamism are conjoined but distinct

Like so many of the conjoined twins Dr Ben Carson has skilfully separated, Islam the monotheism, compatible with democracy, and its impostor, Islamism, the totalitarian ideology, incompatible with democracy, while intricately conjoined, couldn’t be more distinct in personality. Dr Carson’s assertion that American Muslims are unfit to hold the Presidency is explained only by his ignorance – not only of US constitutional history but of Islam and Islamism. His inability to conceive of an American Muslim as a pluralist liberal democrat shows the doctor’s inability – or unwillingness – to separate Islam from Islamism. Dr Carson’s assertions are hardly new. The barring of American Muslims from the Oval office was

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Free speech can’t just apply to those you agree with

Finally, the Stepford Students, those safe-spaced, spoilt-brat censors of anyone who thinks differently to them, have had their comeuppance. Following an outburst of Twitterfury, Warwick Students’ Union (WSU) has backed down on its ban on Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born secularist and stinging critic of Islamobollocks. Having initially said Ms Namazie could not darken Warwick’s campus with her dangerous arguments against, err, religious intolerance and in favour of liberty and democracy, WSU has now said she is welcome. Anyone who thinks universities should be sites of open and sometimes rowdy debate should welcome WSU’s climbdown as a strike for freedom and a blow against the stiff, prim, censorious misanthropes who govern

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

The Pope is trying to be the good cop. So who will be the bad cop?

The Pope has in effect said this to his Catholic flock: Let our rhetoric be liberal; Let us sound like a Church that is moving from harsh rigour to soft friendliness. Does that mean he seeks the reform of any of the Church’s traditional teachings? God knows. He began his US tour in Washington, where he warned the bishops that there is a temptation ‘to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses’. They should try to persuade people ‘with the power and closeness of love’ rather than obsessively condemning ‘their positions, distant as they may be from what we hold as true and certain’. In his final

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Scottish Labour go wild

The brains at Scottish Labour must have been feeling pretty optimistic when they booked their venue at Brighton’s Hilton for their party conference bash. When Mr S arrived at the do last night, the party could hardly be described as packed: Still, the Scots did at least live up to stereotype; by the time Steerpike arrived a cash bar was in operation.

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Pope Francis’s US tour has been a triumph. His conservative critics must be in despair

Apologies for the picture quality (it’s from live coverage by ABC News), but this shot of Pope Francis cracking up as he sees a baby dressed as a pope is just the sort of image that his conservative critics dread. That’s because it undermines their attempts to stop Francis waving through what they regard as a dangerous watering-down of Catholic teaching. The Pope’s visit to the US, which has just ended, has been a public relations triumph. Meaning: a triumph, full stop. Francis was eloquent, relaxed and amazingly youthful for a man heading for 80. He tilted in a liberal direction, but not far enough to create anxiety among most churchgoing Catholics anywhere in the world. Maybe they

Saturday

Douglas Murray

London’s stunning ‘Passion for Freedom’ exhibition is worth an hour of anyone’s time

I am in Copenhagen at the moment – of which more anon.  But before fleeing these shores I had time to pop in to see something I want to recommend to any readers in the London area. For the rest of this weekend you can still see the 2015 Passion for Freedom exhibition at the Mall Galleries, just by Trafalgar Square.  This is the festival’s seventh year and it is going from strength to strength.  The exhibition has a simple mission – which is to display the work of artists who are thinking seriously about freedom, what it means and how you lose it.  In previous years the organisers have run

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Chinese state media praises Osborne’s “unwillingness to bring up human rights”

The Global Times, a state-run Chinese tabloid newspaper, had high praise for George Osborne’s visit. But the English translation of its article was heavily edited, cutting out much of the emotion found in the original. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese translation has a rather different tone and is about twice as long. It refers to the ‘little’ West, a derogatory phrase that doesn’t quite translate into English (it means ‘little’ as in ‘inferior’). The article draws a contrast between Western public opinion, reflected in the media, where there are (unwelcome) concerns about Chinese human rights, and Osborne’s uncritical and polite approach. The Chinese version, however, oozes arrogance, saying that Osborne’s more deferential tone is “only indicative of a natural order”. The English version has the headline: “Osborne’s

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Struggling to get on the property ladder? Qualifying for social housing may soon be your best bet

That the Conservatives came up with the idea of extending the right-to-buy to housing association tenants was a symptom of their failure to believe they could win this year’s general election. Such an ill thought-out policy can only have made it into the manifesto in the expectation that it could be used as a bargaining chip in the coalition negotiations which were expected to follow. Today, communities secretary Greg Clark announced a significant weakening of the manifesto promise. He said he would consider an alternative scheme put forward by the housing associations themselves, which would exempt many properties, such as those funded by charitable donation. In some cases, tenants may

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can the Blairites rescue the Labour party?

The first conference of the Corbyn era has got MPs and journalists scrambling around for a copy of the Labour party’s rule book. Everyone is trying to work out whether or not scrapping Trident will be debated or not. This is the first skirmish in what promises to be a series of procedural fights between Corbyn and his supporters and what is left of the old party establishment. It would be tempting for Labour moderates to end up expending all their energies in these fights, doing what they can to stop the Corbynites seizing control of the commanding heights of the Labour party. But, as I argue in the magazine

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Coincidence

My grandmaster colleague James Plaskett has two passions, the pursuit of the mythical giant octopus (ongoing) and a fascination with coincidence. Is the latter just a concatenation of unrelated circumstances, or does it have some deeper meaning, signifying something in the air at a particular time? How, for example, does one explain the virtually simultaneous, yet certainly isolated, discovery of the calculus by Newton in England, Leibnitz in Germany and Kowa Seki in Japan? So Plaskett would, I am sure, be intrigued by the coincidental publication by two quite different publishing houses, of two books, both by American authors, about simplification, liquidation and the exchange of pieces? Not a subject of

Raymond Keene

No. 380

Black to play. This position is from Abramciuc–Nevednichy, Chisinau 2014. How can Black simplify down to a winning endgame? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 29 September or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week there is a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 … Bd2 Last week’s winner Mark Jenkins, Cardiff

The Spectator

Letters | 24 September 2015

Have faith, Nick Sir: Rarely have I read an article as powerful as Nick Cohen’s (‘Why I left’, 19 September). As a lifelong Tory, all I feel qualified to say is that I think I understand. I am certain, however, that Messrs Corbyn, McDonnell et al will soon be consumed by the fire of their own hatred, and disappear in a puff of acrid smoke. Have faith in the British electorate, Nick. Jem Raison Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire No mention of Paula Sir: With regards to Simon Barnes’s article about drugs in sport (‘Our drugs cheat’, 19 September), I have not ‘outed’ Paula Radcliffe as anything, let alone as a

Peter Jones

Corbyn’s democracy

The virtuous Mr Corbyn is insisting that New Old Labour should return to its traditional republican ways and take decisions ‘democratically’. The emperor Tiberius (ad 14–37) tried this one and it did not work. The first Roman emperor Augustus agreed to his stepson Tiberius’ accession only because death had cheated him of all his preferred options. The problem was that Tiberius’ heart was not really in it. A man with republican sympathies, he seemed to be keen to persuade the senate to return to involvement in the full process of ‘democratic’ rule and decision-making, duties which that body had embraced for nearly 500 years under the republic, but which Augustus

Taki

High life | 24 September 2015

Gstaad Jeremy Clarke has wiped me out again, for a change. His accounts of the high jinks on board the Spectator At the age of 79, I’m seriously contemplating becoming a bird-watcher cruise had the mother of my children laughing out loud, something she’s not known for among those of us who consider laughing loudly a staggering breach of taste. Never mind, Jeremy’s talents and his ability to describe the indescribable in vivid prose is a badly kept secret among those of us who love good writing. The only thing wrong with Jeremy is that he shows me up week in, week out. Being the fall guy does not suit

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 24 September 2015

I was looking after Oscar, my five-and-a-half-year-old grandson, for the day. We’d played football in the garden, then we’d come indoors and played three games of chess, one game of Battleships, and several memory card games. I lost the football by 25 goals to 11, all three games of chess, saw my entire fleet sunk one after the other by a succession of direct hits, and my performance in the memory card games was irrefutable confirmation of my early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. After that we drove to the leisure centre for a swim. In the pool I was required among other things to crawl about on all fours underwater and be

Melissa Kite

Real life | 24 September 2015

After pulling out of my flat sale and U-turning on the idea of moving to the Cotswolds, it took me a while to realise why. But there is a reason I can never seem to find what I’m looking for. No matter where I go to house-hunt for the cottage of my dreams, nothing is ever right, be it in Cobham or further along the A3 or, giving up on the south east altogether, in the Cotswolds. And the reason is not that I am a hopeless flake. The reason is that I have not really been looking for a place in Cobham, or Ripley, or ‘down the Hog’s Back’,

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 24 September 2015

It’s hard to turn on the television nowadays without being shown a robot. It might be looking like a grasshopper doing something terribly important, such as helping a surgeon with an operation, or just be a cute little metal humanoid designed to make schoolchildren more interested in their studies. One robot I saw on TV the other day was disguised as a cuddly white seal pup that was feigning pleasure at being stroked on a woman’s lap in an old people’s home. It seemed to make her happy without biting or scratching or doing any of the other unpleasant things that live animals are prone to. Robots clearly have their

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 24 September 2015

This has been the most shocking saga in the entire history of bridge. In the face of overwhelming evidence that members of their teams have been cheating, Israel, Monaco and Germany have all withdrawn from the world championships, which begin this week in Chennai. So far the German pair alone has admitted their guilt, but no one has any doubt about the other two. So much drama; so many careers and reputations ruined. And how innocent are the teammates who, as some suggest, must have had their suspicions but said nothing? And what about all the players who may have been robbed of victory over the years? I’m thinking particularly

Toby Young Toby Young

Corbyn sets off on the wrong track

Amid all the excitement about David Cameron this week, I fear that Jeremy Corbyn’s first major policy announcement may have been overlooked. That would be a shamae because the policy is really, really bad. I’m talking about his proposal to ‘renationalise’ the railways. Now, I have to confess to not really understanding this policy. Aren’t the railways in England, Scotland and Wales already owned by the state in the form of Network Rail? I know the Department for Transport lets franchises to private providers, such as FirstGroup and Virgin Group, but that doesn’t mean these private companies own the railways — the clue is in the word ‘let’. So how

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 24 September 2015

Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love it when friends and family relieve the monotony of lonely days in my garret by coming to stay, but every time anyone does they want to go to all the museums and galleries, which represents a serious outlay of money for me. Not to mention the restaurants. Given that I’ve been to all of these places umpteen times, how can I tactfully suggest that my guests go alone? —Name and address withheld A. Why not invent the existence of an art and restaurants club which allows residents of the city