Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
President Obama said recently that the United States cannot simply play ‘whack-a-mole’ in the Middle East. The only appropriate response to which is to say, ‘Yes you can.’ We can all understand why the President might be feeling a little tired over all this. For nearly six gruelling years he has been calling the troops
I have a nominee for idiot of the week. I had never heard of him until yesterday, but he is one ‘Andreas Krieg’ who the Daily Mail has referred to as ‘a Middle East security analyst at King’s College London in Qatar.’ Mr Krieg was quoted in a story on the violence in Iraq, Syria,
There is a tendency in Britain to think we are alone in our national madness. So I thought I would cheer everyone up on this lovely weekend by pointing out that one of the big stories in the Netherlands this week has been whether or not a pro-ISIS demonstration should be allowed in the Hague. The demonstration
In January, Douglas Murray explained in The Spectator how relations in the Middle East were becoming increasingly tense. With northern Iraq now in turmoil, following the advance of Islamist militant group Isis, Douglas’s insight seems prescient. Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Matthew Parris vs Douglas Murray on the Birmingham Trojan Horse plot” startat=55] Listen [/audioplayer]Who’s up, who’s down? Who’s in, who’s out? While Westminster spent last week gossiping about which minister’s special adviser said what, in another city, not far away, a very different Britain was unveiled. On Monday, the Chief Inspector of Schools,
Canon Andrew White is one of the bravest men you could ever meet. He is the Anglican vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad and has continued his service in that country throughout its recent horrors. He has lost hundreds of members of his congregation but he has remained an extraordinary, humbling and hope-giving presence
I see that the Labour party, and Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt in particular, are trying to make political capital out of the ‘Trojan Horse’ Islamic schools scandal. I’ll write more about this in the coming week, but for the meantime let me point out what a steaming pile of political opportunism and hypocrisy
Just over a week ago a gunman opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels. Four Jews – including two Israeli tourists – were killed, shot in the face and throat. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said immediately after the killings, and before a suspect had even been identified: ‘This act of murder is the
I have consistently maintained that the Liberal Democrat party is an anachronism, a perversion and general waste of political space. So imagine my joy in recent weeks at discovering that the remaining members of the Liberal Democrat party are starting to agree with me. First there was the Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne saying in
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_29_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Mats Persson discuss the aftermath of the Euro elections” startat=40] Listen [/audioplayer]It must have come so easily back then. In April 2006, the young David Cameron had already assumed the mantle of leader of the Conservative party as arranged by his predecessor, Michael Howard. And as he prepared to assume
Ukip have come top of the polls for the UK in the EU elections. Now which of the two following scenarios might we most likely expect from the other parties? Might the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, along with their amazingly loyal chorus-line in the British media, wake up sincerely believing that a ‘racist’
Well it’s polling day, and if anybody wants a spur to vote Ukip they have two options: Peter Oborne’s stirring cover piece in the new issue of The Spectator and Matthew d’Ancona’s column in yesterday’s Evening Standard. If the sight of white activists pretending to be Romanians so that they could accuse black UKIP members
A jury in the US has taken less than two days to find Abu Hamza guilty on multiple terrorism charges. He can now expect to spend the rest of his life in prison. During the 1990s and later, Abu Hamza was one of a number of extremist clerics given apparent free-reign to operate in the
Is Labour a racist party? The answer, I believe, is ‘no’. Apart from anything else, some of my best friends are in the party and I cannot think they hate themselves or anybody else simply because of their skin colour. Yet the question must be asked. For just this weekend I was rummaging through recent
Inevitably the lowest attacks have been saved until the week of the election. For months now the neat drip-feeding of anti-UKIP stories from Conservative Campaign Headquarters direct to the UK press has done everything possible to depict UKIP as a racist, xenophobic, bigoted party. This has been significantly ratcheted up ahead of Thursday’s vote. Today’s pages
Anyone who hasn’t seen Hamas TV is missing a treat. Of course the low production values are part of the fun. But for the Palestinian audiences, most entertaining of all seems to be the sight of watching Palestinian children being taught to murder every Jew. Often by an adult dressed up as a giant bumble
This has been a bad month for those who want to shut down free speech in Britain. First there was the wholesale failure of Fiyaz Mughal (whose ‘work’ I have written about before). Readers will recall that Mr Mughal – whose website, Tell Mama, claims to record and counter ‘Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred’ – used
The release of Gerry Adams felt a bit like the old days. A Unionist protest outside the police station, a rally of a press conference at a Republican club with Adams, Gerry Kelly and Martin McGuinness on the podium. Whether or not Adams will be charged with involvement in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville
Peter Hain has become a disgrace. Earlier this year it appeared that the Former Northern Ireland Minister was one of the people responsible for the cock-up over letters of amnesty for ‘on-the-run’ terrorists. Now he has gone several steps further. Just last month Hain was just telling everybody who has lost a relative during the Troubles
In one sense the arrest of Gerry Adams for questioning in relation to the murder of Jean McConville is not a surprise. On the other hand it is astonishing. I cannot think how many times over the years the connection between Adams and the McConville case – appalling even by the standards trawled during the
