Isis

This Labour leadership contest has represented an intellectual surrender to Corbynism

The Labour leadership result isn’t announced until 11.45am today. But whatever the result—and no one seems in much doubt what it will be, this contest has represented an intellectual surrender to Jeremy Corbyn and the ideology he represents. Isabel Hardman and Marcus Roberts discuss Corbyn’s victory on Coffee House shots I argue in The Sun this morning, that his opponents surrendered right at the start of the contest. Owen Smith was offered up as a more competent and media savvy leader rather than as the antidote to Corbynism. Smith himself emphasised that the party owed Corbyn ‘a debt of gratitude for helping Labour rediscover its radical roots’. He stressed, ‘I am

Bombs astray

Soon, soon, you will see a wondrous sight,’ says the Isis anthem, ‘for your destruction, my sword has been sharpened. We march by night, to cut and behead… We make the streets run red with blood, from the stabbing of the bayonets, from the striking of the necks, on the assembly of the dogs.’ The people of the Syrian town of Deir Ezzor were left in no doubt that they were the dogs in question. This nasheed — or chant — was posted on the internet, played over video from Syrian state TV of Deir Ezzor residents criticising the Isis siege. The message was clear. That was at the beginning

The Crusades live

The 12th-century crusader Reynald de Chatillon was one of the most controversial men of his time, and his new biographer Jeffrey Lee believes he has returned to disturbing relevance in ours. Over a relatively long life with a dramatically violent end, Reynald became Prince of Antioch by marriage, endured 16 years in a dungeon below Aleppo, attempted (uniquely in Islamic history) to raid Mecca and Medina, overturned the politics of the Crusader states, and became the bitterest enemy of Saladin. Reynald probably could not read or write, but had he tried his bloodstained hand at Blairesque apologetic memoir, the result might well have resembled Lee’s book. Like Reynald, Lee possesses

Portrait of the week | 15 September 2016

Home Schools in England would have the right to select pupils by ability, under plans outlined by Theresa May, the Prime Minister. New grammar schools would take quotas of poor pupils or help run other schools, a Green Paper proposed. ‘We already have selection in our school system — and it’s selection by house price, selection by wealth. That is simply unfair,’ Mrs May said in a speech. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, said the idea that poor children would benefit from a return of grammar schools was ‘tosh’. Oversubscribed Catholic schools which wished to expand would be able to choose all their additional pupils on grounds

Are Isis Islamic? Hillary Clinton seems to think so

Here’s a strange thing. In a TV interview on Thursday morning, Hillary Clinton said that Isis want Donald Trump to become President of the United States. In her words, Isis are currently saying, ‘Please, Allah, make Trump president of America’. Personally I have no idea which ticket Isis will be campaigning for, come November. But I do find this all very confusing. We all learnt from President Obama that Isis have absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Indeed, when the group decapitated the American hostage Peter Kassig a couple of years ago, the Commander in Chief insisted that ‘Isil’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith’. But

Why Anjem Choudary should not be in prison

It was impossible not to feel rather sorry for the radical Muslim ‘cleric’ Anjem Choudary and his imbecilic henchman Mohammed Rahman as they were each sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a British court. ‘Allahu Akbar!’ his supporters chanted as the sentence was delivered, an invigorating, all-purpose phrase used during decapitations, bombings or just as one is walking down the street. I have taken to using it as well recently, most especially at a critical juncture when I am pleasuring my wife. I think she appreciates it, although I would not be so ungentlemanly as to wake her up and ascertain for sure. Mr Choudary and

Islamic State’s ‘Jizya tax’ for Christians is pure propaganda

Christians continue to be slaughtered in the Middle East. But as reports of genocidal atrocities mount up, our governments have found a new reason to sit on their hands. Christians, the theory goes, don’t have it as bad as the Yazidis. As ‘people of the book’, Christians enjoy privileged status. Rather than suffering the full extent of Islamic State’s depravities, they can pay a tax (Jizya) in return for protection. It sounds credible and contains just enough theology to bamboozle the secular population of the international community. Here’s the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights: ‘While Christian communities still living in Daesh controlled territories live difficult and often

France began breeding jihadis in 1989

E .D. Hirsch Jr., the American educationalist and author of Cultural Literacy, has a new book out that may throw some light on why France has such a problem integrating its Muslim population. Called Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories, it’s a comprehensive attack on the progressive approach that has done so much harm to schools in the West. Hirsch identifies three ideas in particular: that education should be ‘developmentally appropriate’, with the emphasis on learning through discovery; that it should be ‘child-centred’, taking account of different ‘learning styles’; and that the overarching aim of education should be the cultivation of ‘critical thinking’ skills. I’ve spent

The Spectator Podcast: Marriage for one | 27 August 2016

An increasing number of women are entering into the institution of marriage with their dream partner: themselves. In her cover piece this week, Ariane Sherine investigates the women who have brought a new literalism to saying, ‘I do’. But is this just a quirky fad? Or are we witnessing a profound social change? Lara Prendergast speaks to Ariane and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson on this week’s Spectator podcast. Ariane tells Lara: ‘There are an increasing number of women who have decided, because they don’t have a man – or maybe some of them don’t want a man – that if they can’t find Mr Right, well, I’m going to embrace

Freedom is our best weapon against Isis

Of all the guff churned out about Isis, the refrain that we are engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘battle of ideas’ is uniquely moronic. Isis doesn’t want civilisation. As for a battle of ideas – what ideas? Isis doesn’t have any, unless you count an apocalyptic fight to the death in Dabiq or Rome. We are reliably informed that Isis includes some very intelligent people who spend years planning terror attacks. Yet it took the, ahem, ‘conflicted’ Mohamed Bouhlel – that brave warrior who defecated on his own daughter’s bed – months to plan his terror attack, which consisted solely of getting in a lorry and putting his foot

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator Podcast: Marriage for one

An increasing number of women are entering into the institution of marriage with their dream partner: themselves. In her cover piece this week, Ariane Sherine investigates the women who have brought a new literalism to saying, ‘I do’. But is this just a quirky fad? Or are we witnessing a profound social change? Lara Prendergast speaks to Ariane and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson on this week’s Spectator podcast. Ariane tells Lara: ‘There are an increasing number of women who have decided, because they don’t have a man – or maybe some of them don’t want a man – that if they can’t find Mr Right, well, I’m going to embrace

Super human

‘We think we’re in charge of this stuff but we’re not,’ said Quincy Jones, the composer, arranger, jazz trumpeter, musical genius. He was talking to Julian Joseph at the Montreux Jazz Festival for Jazz Line-Up on Radio 3 (Saturday). ‘It’s divine intervention.’ Jones, who masterminded Michael Jackson’s Thriller as well as countless other hits, film scores (including The Italian Job and The Color Purple) and his own ‘Soul Bossa Nova’, was remarkably sanguine about his extraordinary career. His enormous self-confidence was there from the start. Finding himself in Paris in the 1950s touring with a big band, he decided to stay on so that he could study with Nadia Boulanger

The Spectator podcast: The real hate crime scandal | 6 August 2016

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

The Spectator podcast: The real hate crime scandal

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

Clueless in Syria

The other day I was speaking to a Kurdish journalist who was held in Isis captivity for ten months. He and a colleague had had the bad luck to run into an Isis checkpoint in Syria. ‘How do you perform the midday prayer?’ they were asked after their car was waved to a halt. Unable to answer — they were not believers — they were immediately beaten around the head. Then one of the jihadis from the checkpoint was put into the back of their car and they were told to drive to the Isis base. The fighter had a pistol pointed at them the whole time, which was superfluous

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 July 2016

At the beginning of his war memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote, ‘All my life I have had a certain idea of France’ and its ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. It was not only an abstract concept: the picture in his mind was of ‘the Madonna in mural frescoes’. What is President Hollande’s certain idea of France? Presumably it cannot be the Madonna, since Hollande is the child of French laïcité, which creates an unbridgeable gulf between religion and the republic. But what happens when, in the name of one religion, men in France enter the temple of another and slit the throat of a priest, as happened this week near

Portrait of the week | 28 July 2016

Home The collapse of BHS after Sir Philip Green had extracted large sums and left the business on ‘life support’, with a £571 million pension deficit, was ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism,’ said a report by the Business and the Work and Pensions select committees of the House of Commons. The British economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the quarter ending in June. A man was shot dead at a commercial pool party in Headley, Surrey, organised by Summerlyn Farquharson, known as the Female Boss Krissy, and the Jamaican reggae artist Jason White, known as Braintear Spookie. HMS Ambush, a Royal Navy Astute-class nuclear-powered submarine, was in a ‘glancing collision’ with

Douglas Murray

Europe’s summer of terror

How is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain seems to be missing the worst. True, a couple of men of Middle Eastern appearance tried to abduct a soldier near his base in Norfolk for what was unlikely to have been an interfaith dialogue session. But Britain’s geographical good fortune, relative success in limiting weapons and our justified scepticism of the undiscriminating ‘open borders’ brigade mean that we have so far been spared the delights of what Angela Merkel’s growing army of critics refer to as her summer of terror. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror: It is now a fortnight since Mohammed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’

French politicians have a major problem on their hands

Today’s attack was the 7th Islamist terrorist atrocity in France since January 2015. Two hundred and thirty six people have been killed by Islamist terrorism there in the last 18 months. This attack might only have killed one innocent person but it was a particularly brutal event: an 84-year-old priest had his throat slit while celebrating Mass. It was an attack that was designed to shock and to divide, to make it impossible to ignore the religious element of this act of terrorism. Douglas Murray and Haras Rafiq discuss Europe’s summer of terror: The two terrorists were shot dead by police before they could kill their other hostages, two nuns and

Courageous Kemp

Before I set about reviewing Ross Kemp: The Fight Against Isis (Sky 1), I thought I’d have a glance to see whether other critics had been as impressed as I was. Clearly the flip groovester from the Guardian — who opened, inevitably, with a jaunty quip about Grant from EastEnders — had seen a very different documentary from the one I saw. Otherwise, he could not have failed to be moved by Kemp’s heartbreaking interview with the Yazidi woman from Sinjar who’d recently escaped from Isis. Her 10-year-old daughter squatted beside her — only survivor of the five children she had had when Isis captured her town. The eldest (11)