Islam

When the contestants were lining up for last night’s sensational 5,000 metre race, both of the American contestants waited until the cameras were on them, then crossed themselves and held their hands in prayer. It’s quite some sight to secular Brits, where religious language (even ‘God bless’) and mannerisms have dropped out of our national life and vocabulary. But to quite a few of the Olympians, their faith is of crucial importance, which we have seen this year through their Twitter feeds. Mo Farah, a Muslim, prayed on the track after winning both of his Golds. After Usain Bolt broke the Olympic record for the 100 metres, he did likewise.

Few books have had a greater effect on me than Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint. The clarity of Hughes’ style in his dissection of the discontents of the 1980s was enough to make me love him. In his political writing, histories and art criticism he never descended into theory or jargon, but imitated his heroes, Tom Paine, George Orwell and EP Thompson, and talked to the reader without condescension or obscurantism Critics denounce and admirers celebrate the ‘muscular style’, but I find it more courteous than macho. Hughes tackled hard and often obscure subjects, the rise of modern art, the penal colonies in early Australia, and made a deal with

Two events this week have highlighted, from very different places, an identical problem. In Bulgaria on Wednesday a bomb was detonated on a tour bus carrying Israelis. Six people were killed and many more badly injured. On Friday a couple from Oldham, Mohammed Sadiq Khan and Shasta Khan, were sent to prison for attempting to put together an explosive device and planning to attack Jewish targets in Manchester. What links these two events across a continent? The answer is ideology. It is an ideology which deliberately targets Jews as Jews. In the West many people continue to try to pretend that it is not about Jews at all, but about

I’ve just received email notification of a debate I sadly missed at the East London Mosque entitled ‘Was Jesus a Muslim Prophet or a Christian God?’ The email came from a thoughtful chap called Abdullah Al Andalusi who informs me that the speakers tended towards the former, rather than latter proposition. Indeed, there was a ‘powerful refutation’ of Christian dogma on the subject. I am genuinely saddened to have missed this debate, as it’s the sort of thing which is always fun to chew over. As a consequence I have it in mind to arrange a similar sort of intellectual pow-wow — a debate which asks the question: ‘Was Mohammed

Imbecilic leftie authoritarians are whining again about being called nasty names by people with less power than them. Exhibit A is the fabulously stupid Islamist Mehdi Hasan, once of the New Statesman and now of the Huffington PostUK, whatever that is. Here’s the emetic opening sentence of his article in today’s Guardian (under the headline ‘We Mustn’t Allow Muslims In Public Life To Be Silenced.’ Yes, he means himself): ‘Have you ever been called an Islamist? How about a jihadist or a terrorist?? Extremist maybe? Welcome to my world.’ The abuse he gets, he whines, is ‘as relentless as it is vicious’. He complains about being called a dangerous Muslim

The slaughter of the innocents in Houla, Syria, has concentrated the West’s collective mind. The Times declares (£), not unreasonably, that there is a desire to stop what the UN, while making Robert Mugabe its tourism envoy, has tepidly described as ’18 months of violence’. The paper adds that ‘all options are on the table’. Western voices are emitting decibels of disgust. Secretary of State Clinton has castigated the Russian regime for its intransigence in the Security Council, and has said that Russia’s policy will ‘contribute to a civil war’. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain has repeated his view that the Obama administration’s inaction on Syria denies what it is to be American.

A few years ago, The Spectator, in an inspired notion for the Easter issue, asked a number of prominent individuals whether they believed in the Resurrection. And among the surprises was George Galloway, who replied emphatically in the affirmative: ‘Yes, I believe in the Resurrection. I believe God restored the life of Jesus of Nazareth and took him to his bosom. The example of suffering and sacrifice followed by vindication is central to my religious belief.’ One hopes there wasn’t an element of hubris here, whereby George identified himself with Christ — suffering followed by vindication — but the fact remains that it was a very public profession of faith