Islam

Sunday

Charles Moore

Why it is wrong for Christians to eat their wives

In his column last week, Rod Liddle suggested that an alleged fatwa by a Saudi Arabian cleric had said it was permissible to eat one’s wife when suffering from ‘severe hunger’ gave him (Rod) the go-ahead to eat his own wife. Not so, surely. In the Christian religion and, indeed, the secular law of the United Kingdom, one can have only one wife at a time. If one has only one wife, it would be quite wrong to eat her. Under Islam, one can have up to four. Obviously this generous provision creates ‘spares’. Until recently, British marriage law was hidebound by tradition, but, before the last election, Parliament voted

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 3 December 2015

Bombers without borders Sir: To define this week’s debate as being about ‘bombing Syria’ (‘The great fake war’, 28 November) is ludicrous. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about fighting Isis. Whatever you call them, and wherever they are. The current deal, under which we bomb Isis in Iraq but not in Syria, is as if we are content to fight them in Yorkshire but not in Lancashire. If people do not think we should be engaging Isis at all, that’s a different argument. But I would ask, ‘Where do they need to get to before you would engage them?’ Two years ago, we had a similar situation to today. The

John Gimlette

Bad news from paradise

Suddenly, the Maldivians are in the news. Earlier this year, they locked up their first democratically elected president, and just recently they declared a state of emergency. It never used to be like this. The Maldives was just a place you saw in brochures, looking expensively turquoise. It has a population no bigger than Barnet (350,000), and 99 per cent of the country is covered in water. Until recently, even its neighbour, Sri Lanka, hardly seemed to notice it. During my time in Colombo, visiting Maldivians were merely a source of idle curiosity. They flew into town either to pick up a secular education or to get roaring drunk. It

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

There’s nothing cowardly about the French

Several years ago I visited the village of Couillery in Lower Normandy to interview Juliette Girard for a book I was writing about the wartime SAS. She was 80, small, grey and bird-like. She still lived on the farm on which she’d grown up, the same farm where in the summer of 1944 she hid three members of the SAS. The Germans knew the British had parachuted into the area and for nearly two weeks they scoured the countryside. They came to the farm where Juliette lived with her parents; they searched it inside out, but the soldiers had been smuggled out of the back, across a field and into

Thursday

Taki

It is political correctness, not maniacal bigots, that will end civilisation

What does one do, attend or refuse a party after a tragic event such as the recent Paris outrage? My son happens to live next to Place de la République, where the massacre of innocents by those nice Islamists showing off their manhood took place. He was having dinner with his two little children when the shooting started. Luckily, they’re all OK, but I spent a terrible couple of hours trying to get through after the news came over the TV screens. The next evening in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Costume Institute was celebrating The Art of Style with a black-tie dinner honouring Jacqueline de

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The French might as well bomb Belgium

I am always open to spiritual guidance from any quarter, all the more so if that guidance is of practical import. So I was especially grateful to hear reports of a fatwa from the prominent Saudi Arabian cleric, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah. This fatwa apparently made it clear that it was perfectly permissible for me, if suffering from ‘severe hunger’, to eat my wife. Either eat all of her — or merely, as it helpfully elucidated, some of her ‘body parts’. It did not say which body parts. In lieu of further enlightenment, I assumed that all of them were up for grabs. Anyway, many has been the time that I have

Wednesday

Ed West

I have no sympathy for people who complain about ‘sharia Uber drivers’

Actress Frances Barber has complained about her taxi driver after a night out in town, tweeting: https://twitter.com/francesbarber13/status/668598758473654272 The man had allegedly told her she was ‘disgustingly dressed’ and that ‘women should not be out at night’. This was after she had remarked about the weather being cold. That’s the problem with liberalising the taxi market to let any random person drive you around – it reduces the level of trust. As Rory Sutherland explained in this magazine a couple of years ago, trust is extremely important to capitalism and that’s why having hurdles such as the Knowledge is necessary: ‘Reciprocation, reputation and pre-commitment are the three big mechanisms which add

Saturday

Charles Moore

Is it really ‘grossly irresponsible’ to be critical of Islam?

Hours before the Paris atrocities, Al Arabiya news reported a speech by David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. In it, he said that because some mainstream media were ‘grossly irresponsible’ in their coverage of Muslim issues, Ipso, the press standards body, ought to consider making it possible for an entire religious group to bring a complaint about coverage. Mr Anderson is an able and distinguished lawyer. Surely he knows that the entire history of this subject is that mainstream Muslim bodies are constantly trying to criminalise hostile remarks about their religion. And surely he knows that if this were conceded, the chilling of free speech would be

Friday

Douglas Murray

Another day, and another terror attack that is ‘nothing to do with Islam’

Another day and another group of men from an unknown religion storm into a hotel shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. This time in Mali. Once again they take hostages. And once again they free only those who can recite the Quran. Of course our Home Secretary Theresa May along with the President and Secretary of State in the U.S. will all say this has ‘Nothing to do with Islam.’ Or as Secretary Kerry said a couple of days back after the massacre in Paris. ‘It has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism – I mean you name it’. Indeed, so

Thursday

Toby Young

Are we looking at the end of liberal democracy?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/parisattacksaftermath/media.mp3″ title=”Toby Young and Kemi Badenoch discuss the role of integration in the rise of Isis” startat=1470] Listen [/audioplayer]As a graduate student in the Harvard Department of Government in the late 1980s, I became slightly jaded about the number of visiting academics who warned about the imminent demise of the West. The thrust of their arguments was nearly always the same. The secular liberal values we cherish, such as the separation of church and state and freedom of speech, won’t survive in the face of growing religious animosity unless they’re rooted in something more intellectually and spiritually compelling than capitalist individualism. They were talking about Islamic fundamentalism, obviously, though

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Has ‘Islam’s reformation’ really begun?

Usama Hasan, an imam attached to the Quilliam Foundation, argues in the Times that Islam is steadily adapting to modernity. It has been doing so since the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire launched certain reforms. Islam should not be judged by a few marginal hiccups in this process. ‘Isis follows a fundamentalist and selective reading of scripture which is ahistorical and heretical. They are linked to Islam and the Koran in the way the Ku Klux Klan and Anders Breivik are linked to Christianity and the Bible.’ This is not helpful. For extremely reactionary Christians have not gained power in a large proportion of the traditionally Christian world. He

Toby Young Toby Young

Western liberalism is no match for the Islamic Game of Thrones

As a graduate student in the Harvard Government Department in the late 1980s, I became slightly jaded about the number of visiting professors who warned about the imminent demise of the West. The thrust of their arguments was nearly always the same. The secular liberal values we cherish, such as freedom of speech and the separation of church and state, won’t survive in the face of growing, religious disenchantment with modernity unless they’re rooted in something more meaningful than rational individualism. They were talking about Islamic Fundamentalism, obviously, although sometimes they threw in Christian Fundamentalism as well in order not to seem ‘Orientalist’ or ‘ethnocentric’. These political scientists were, without exception,

Wednesday

Lara Prendergast

Yes, we wear poppies. But we don’t print our faces onto them

‘What’s worse: people who add French flags to their Facebook profiles, or those who sneer at them?’ asks my colleague Isabel Hardman on Coffee House today. ‘Haven’t we always offered small gestures to commemorate sad events? Or to show respect? Why do we buy poppies in November, and feel under-dressed without them?’ In some ways, I agree with Isabel – it is normal to want to show respect, and to feel an emotional response to such serious events. What troubles me about the profile picture change is not so much the act – had the option been to change your profile picture simply to a Tricolore, without your face behind it,

Maurice Mcleod

Why I didn’t sing La Marseillaise last night

When Patrice Evra and the French national football team lined up at Wembley last night, it was a moment of poignant defiance which earned an instant place in sporting iconography. I shed a tear, but I didn’t sing La Marseillaise. When horrendous things like the attacks on Paris happen, our first instincts are to offer solidarity and what help we can. And, yes, to hit back. The night after the attack, France launched 20 separate air strikes on what it said were Isis strongholds in Syria. And at home, an extra 115,000 gendarmes were deployed across France, leading to hundreds of raids with dozens of arrests.  In the days following attacks on the West,

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Politicians are finally starting to admit a link between Islam and the extremists

One step forward, one step back. Theresa May says in Parliament that the Paris attacks have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. And on the same day, later in the evening, her boss quite rightly says: ‘It is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists. Why? Because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims.’ In saying this the Prime Minister was echoing the sensible and intelligent comments of one of his ministers – Sajid Javid – who rightly said in January after the last massacre in Paris: ‘The lazy answer would be to

Monday

Melanie McDonagh

Michel Houellebecq’s vision of a France ruled by an Islamist regime is all too plausible

No question about the book of the year: it’s Michel Houellebecq’s Submission (Heinemann, £18.99) in Lorin Stein’s fluent translation. It’s France, 2022, when a moderate Muslim Brotherhood government takes charge. While the narrator submits to the new low-key Islamic regime, the liberal left collapses for want of coherence before an ideology intent on winning the battle of ideas through demography. ‘To them it’s simple — whichever segment of the population has the highest birthrate and does the best job of transmitting its values, wins.’ Following its publication, the Guardian asked brightly: ‘Does Houellebecq really hate women and Muslims, or is he just a twisted provocateur?’ But the book is more

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Islamic State are clear about their values. Are we clear about ours?

Here we go again. The same mantras are dusted down: we must be more assertive of our values, less tolerant of extremism, we must challenge Muslim separatism more effectively, demand better integration. And in my opinion the same root question is somewhat evaded: what exactly are our values? It is easier to assume that this is obvious – and it gives an impression of toughness. For example Boris Johnson today: ‘This is a fight we will one day inevitably win – because in the end our view of the human spirit is vastly more attractive and realistic than theirs.’ But what is our view of the human spirit? What is

Sunday

Douglas Murray

Nine conclusions not to draw from the Paris attacks

A huge number of nonsense goes around after atrocities like those in Paris. The media and social media are full of them. I thought it might be helpful to list the worst. ‘This attack has nothing to do with Islam’: obviously not true. See here. ‘Islam means peace’: Very obviously not true. Incidentally the word actually means ‘submission’. Again see here. ‘This attack was an attack on Islam’: No. It was an attack on the people of Paris who were going to watch a football match or a concert or eating in a restaurant. ‘MuslimsAreNotTerrorists’: Today’s leading hashtag on Twitter. Again, clearly wrong. While nobody thinks all Muslims are terrorists all

Saturday

Freddy Gray

The strange relationship between Islam, violence and French football

It is not so surprising if the jihadists in Paris were targeting an international football match. There has for years been a strange relationship between football, Islam and violence in France. The French football team, les bleus, have long been held up as an emblem of harmony and hope in an otherwise bleak multicultural landscape. The world cup winning team of 1998 consisted largely of the children of African immigrants and was celebrated as a great symbol of how the modern multicultural fifth republic could work. Zinedine Zidane, a Muslim boy from Marseilles, was the star of that tournament. Eight years later, when he was sent off for headbutting Marco

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Will politicians finally admit that the Paris attacks had something to do with Islam?

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 last month. 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