Isis

Thursday

The Spectator

Giving up the fight

“Whether it’s in Iraq, Syria, Libya or elsewhere — as Prime Minister, if I believe there is a specific threat to the British people, would I be prepared to authorise action to neutralise that threat? Yes, I would.” It is almost two years since David Cameron lost a vote on intervening in the Syrian war and he has barely spoken about foreign affairs since. He is now slowly returning to the subject, making the case for pursuing Islamic State in Syria. The recent murder of 30 British holidaymakers in Tunisia was almost certainly planned in Isis’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. The Prime Minister is making the fairly simple case that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 July 2015

Home Parents would be able to have their children’s passports removed if they were suspected of planning to travel abroad to join a radical group, under provisions outlined by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to deal with Islamist extremism. It emerged that five British pilots embedded with allied forces had been taking part in air strikes over Syria, which Parliament had voted against in 2013. Julian Lewis, the Conservative chairman of the Defence Select Committee, accused Mr Cameron of making up policy ‘on the hoof’. Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said that in order to defeat the Islamic State, ‘tanks would have to roll

Jane Kelly

Teenage terrors

One of the great moments of my student life was opening the door and seeing visitors step back, shocked. I’d shaved my hair off to an eighth of an inch. It felt like velvet but looked spiky and hard. It was all down to Ulrike Meinhof, co-founder with Andreas Baader of the Red Army Faction, who’d just hanged herself in Stammheim prison, in Germany. My friends liked my haircut as we conflated Ulrike the martyr with images of a mullet-haired Jane Fonda raising her fist against the US army on behalf of the tortured Viet Cong. I was reminded of that haircut — and my shocked visitors — by the

Wednesday

Con Coughlin

Could the Taliban become a useful ally against Islamic State?

For the better part of a decade, Nato forces fought a bitter war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of thousands of troops – including 453 members of Britain’s Armed Forces – and left thousands more seriously maimed by roadside bombs and other devilish devices. So it is perfectly understandable that anyone who has had the least dealings with this ugly conflict, from politicians to the families and friends of those who participated, should recoil in horror at reports that senior members of the Taliban are now actively participating in negotiations that could ultimately see them become members of the Afghan government. The Nato mission to Afghanistan,

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 16 July 2015

Unions led astray Sir: Leo McKinstry’s article on the current problems in the trade unions (‘Counter-strike’, 11 July) brings back unhappy memories of the last time a similar situation arose. This was probably best known for Arthur Scargill’s attempt to use his position as head of the NUM for his own self-aggrandisment. I lived through that era and remember it well. I knew union members who were frightened of their ‘leaders’, a situation the founders of the trade union movement would have found incredible. In 1974 I attempted to transfer my union membership to a new location. Two representatives of the local branch came to see me, and were all

Ahmed Rashid

Al-Qaeda could end up the big winners in Syria

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3″ title=”Ahmed Rashid and Douglas Murray discuss how the West is working with al-Qa’eda” startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]After plunging Syria into five years of a bloody civil war that has killed 300,000 and displaced 10 million, Bashar al-Assad is preparing for the endgame. He has been digging a bunker for himself, creating an enclave in the mountains around the coastal city of Latakia where his community, the Alawites, are in a majority. The Iranians are helping him set up this new retreat, but his hope of hanging on to Syria is dying. The question being asked in the region is not whether he’ll survive, but who will run Damascus once

Wednesday

Nick Cohen

Keep the cops away from the radical clerics, be they Christian or Muslim

If you want to see our grievance-ridden, huckster-driven future, looks to Northern Ireland, which has always been a world leader in the fevered politics of religious victimhood and aggression. Just as the Tories and much of the politically-correct liberal centre think they can force us to be nice by allowing the cops to arrest those who ‘spread hate but do not break laws’ (in George Osborne’s sinister words) so Northern Ireland has all kinds of restrictions of ‘hate speech’ to police its rich and diverse tradition of religious bigotry. I suppose it was inevitable that they would catch 78-year-old Pastor James McConnell of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in North Belfast.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 9 July 2015

The case for Daesh Sir: For once the admirable Rod Liddle has got it completely wrong (‘You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State’, 4 July). We absolutely shouldn’t call the homoerotic, narcissistic death cult ‘Islamic State’ — not because it offends ordinary Muslims, nor because it has nothing to do with Islam (it has everything to do with Islam) but because it legitimises and validates the preposterous project. The media has a responsibility not to run terrorist propaganda unchallenged. Politicians, including the Prime Minister, are starting to wise up to this and should be applauded for doing so. We are in an information war with our enemies. Let

The Spectator

Barometer | 9 July 2015

Naming terror David Cameron and the BBC argued over what to call the terror group most papers refer to as Isis — with the PM preferring Isil and the BBC continuing to call it Islamic State. Two more terror groups whose names caused problems in Britain: — The Red Army Faction was a German terror group which existed between 1970 and 1998, when it declared itself dissolved. Faced with the acronym RAF, British media preferred to call the group by its nickname the Baader-Meinhof Gang. — In the 1970s Italy was terrorised by a group known as the Red Brigades, most notorious for kidnapping and murdering the former prime minister

Christina Lamb

Diary – 9 July 2015

One strange consequence of my job as a foreign correspondent is discovering beautiful places when terrible things happen in them. So it was that I have been spending the past couple of weeks in Tunisia, a land of azure skies, whitewashed houses and apricot light which has inspired artists such as Paul Klee. That beauty — along with soft sandy beaches, local rosé and low prices — also attracted hundreds of thousands of British tourists. Not any more, after a young Tunisian took a gun from inside a beach umbrella at the resort of Sousse and slaughtered 38 holidaymakers, 30 of them British. Almost every Tunisian I met apologised on

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Behind the Black Flag curtain

So you’ve just popped out of town for the day on an errand. And when you get back, everyone has gone. Your wife, your kids, your nephews and nieces, your friends, your customers: they’ve all been kidnapped and dragged off to a place so barbarically horrible that really they’d be better off dead. Your daughter, for example. If she’s nine or over then she’s considered fair game. She’ll be sold as a slave in the market to the highest bidder — as ever, there’s a premium for blonde hair or blue eyes— after which her new owner can use her as she wishes. The very least she can expect is

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 July 2015

Home At least 30 British people were among 38 shot dead at a beach resort at Sousse in Tunisia by Seifeddine Rezgui, aged 23, a Tunisian acting for the Islamic State and said to have been trained in Libya. Soldiers, emergency services and 1,000 police took part in a two-day exercise in London simulating a terrorist attack. A statutory obligation became binding on public bodies, including schools, to prevent people being drawn towards terrorism. Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, said that schools should look out for ‘homophobia’ as a symptom of Islamist jihadism. James Brokenshire, the Immigration Minister, said the National Barrier Asset (lengths of nine-foot fencing) would be deployed

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Isil stands for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Does David Cameron not realise this?

It is very easy to make David Cameron and the Scottish National Party look ridiculous. But as every soldier and journalist knows, just because a target is easy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hit it. The attempt by supposedly respectable politicians to use trickery and outright lies to rebrand Islamic State as a state that has nothing to with Islam is too good to miss. David Cameron kicked off this week when he shouted at the BBC for calling Islamic State ‘Islamic State’. Yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions he was at it again. Islamic State should not be called ‘Islamic State’ but ‘Isil’. Meanwhile the SNP rounded up Boris Johnson, Caroline

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why are politicians trying to boss the BBC around?

One of the most striking things about the debate in the Commons this afternoon on Britain and International Security was that rather than debate the complexities of intervening in Syria, a lot of MPs were very keen to talk about the name of the terror group the government might take action against. MP after MP from all sides of the House rose to complain about the BBC’s decision not to call the group ‘Daesh’, and started to hatch a powerful plan to gang up on the broadcaster and use ‘Daesh’ anyway, until the corporation relents. Alex Salmond even went so far as to say that ‘we could actually achieve something

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If only more people joined Islamic State

Here’s the headline from the Daily Mail: Family of 12 from Luton – including a baby and two grandparents who are suffering from diabetes and cancer – feared to have joined ISIS  It undoubtedly says something about me that my first reaction upon reading the story was: yay – result! That’s saved us all quite a few bob, no? Carry on like this and we might clear the national debt. I have no sympathy for, or empathy with, these people. Except a slight suspicion that by joining Islamic State, they are probably doing the right thing. By their own lights. Would that more might follow. These people have looked at

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State

At last, British politicians have been galvanised into action by the appalling events last weekend in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, in which 38 people were murdered by an Islamist terrorist. Yes, yes, about time, you might be muttering to yourself — but credit where it’s due, please. They may be a little late to the party but at least they have arrived. A convocation of 120 of our MPs, including Boris Johnson, have demanded strong and forthright action. They have written to the BBC demanding that it stop using the term ‘Islamic State’ to describe the organisation responsible for the attack, because it might upset that seemingly diminishing, if

Monday

James Forsyth

Cameron wants the UK to be more ‘intolerant of intolerance’

The minute’s silence before David Cameron’s statement to the House gave proceedings in the Commons this afternoon a particularly sombre air. When Cameron spoke at the despatch box, he announced a national minute’s silence at noon on Friday to remember those killed in Tunisia. He also said that there was, as yet, no evidence that Friday’s attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait were coordinated. He did, however, confirm that an emergency exercise drill on how to deal with a terrorist attack will take place in London in the next few days. In terms of action overseas, Cameron reiterated that if there was an imminent threat to UK national security he

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

We assume British Muslims support British values. Do they?

Let’s put the question very bluntly: do British Muslims affirm British values, or are they outsiders to our way of life? Or, even more bluntly: can we trust them? It is important that we learn to answer this question with nuance, and not in a self-righteous and simplistic way. A week before the Tunisian carnage, David Cameron implicitly raised the question, when he said that too many mainstream Muslims were equivocating, seeming to condone Islamic State and to disparage the West –this ‘paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent’, he said. His comments, and his planned counter-extremism bill, were strongly condemned by commentators, and

Saturday

Douglas Murray

‘Religion of peace’ is not a harmless platitude | 27 June 2015

The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack. It is what David Cameron said after two British extremists cut off the head of Drummer Lee Rigby in London, when ‘Jihadi John’ cut off the head of aid worker

Friday