Religion

Later today the House of Commons will vote upon a motion expressing belief that a genocide is underway against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. The motion, proposed by Fiona Bruce MP, is supported by a large number of MPs from all parties. The Government is expected to oppose, as they did when a similar measure was debated in the Lords. At the time of writing, party enforcers are rumoured to be whipping MPs on the payroll to abstain from the vote. This is an old parliamentary tactic intended to undermine the legitimacy and clout of the measure under consideration by reducing the number of

I don’t think there is a Royal College of Public Relations, but if there were, it should teach a course based on a comparison between two stories last week. One concerned the Prime Minister and the other the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both arose from the paternity of the principals and, in both cases, the principals had not done anything wrong. Yet there the similarities end. David Cameron, and those working for him, spent the best part of a week fending off and then changing a story they found embarrassing. Justin Welby, and his much smaller staff, confirmed the truth of a potentially much more painful story in one go, bravely

You might expect that the murder of Christians would excite particular horror in countries of Christian heritage. Yet almost the opposite seems to be true. Even amid the current slew of Islamist barbarities, the killing of 72 people, 29 of them children, on Easter Day in Lahore, stands out. So does the assault in Yemen in which nuns were murdered and a priest was kidnapped and then, apparently, crucified on Good Friday. But the coverage tends to downplay such stories — there has been much less about Lahore than Brussels, though more than twice as many died — or at least their religious element. The BBC correspondent in Lahore, Shazheb

It was only a matter of time before Brussels got the suicide-bomb allahu akbar treatment, as the Belgians knew full well. Part of the city – especially Molenbeek – is a cesspit of Islamic extremism. The authorities have been content to let such areas fester and until recently the police were noticeable by their absence. Quite aside from the Isis-inspired suicide bombers, a whole crescent (suitably enough) along the north-west seaboard of Europe has proved fertile ground for the Arab European League, a violently anti-Semitic and anti-western Islamist movement which has attracted scant attention, despite its typically vile programme. From Lille in the south, via Brussels, Antwerp, The Hague all the way

Later today, barring last minute developments, Labour and SNP MPs will temporarily unite with the Conservatives’ religious right to defeat the government’s plans to liberalise Sunday trading laws — echoing the defeat which Mrs Thatcher suffered on the same subject 30 years ago. The Left will chirrup, but why is it apparently in favour of keeping Sunday special when logic dictates that it ought to be against? The Reverend Giles Fraser aside, the Left nowadays is generally quite anti-God –– or it is certainly against the promotion of Christianity as an established religion. In the diverse, multi-cultural society of its dreams, no religion is superior than any other and none

Sadiq Khan, I’m sure you and your supporters think you’re being super right-on when you say that it would send a ‘phenomenal message’ to the world if Londoners were to elect their first-ever Muslim mayor in May. But actually you’re playing an incredibly dangerous game. You’re Islamifying what ought to be a straight political contest. You’re turning the vote over who should run London into a test of Londoners’ tolerance of Islam. You’re asking voters to prove they aren’t prejudiced, when all they should be doing is expressing a political preference. Stop it. The Khan camp has been playing the Muslim card from the get-go. Last year, Khan talked up

Niall Ferguson got me thinking about this in his Sunday Times piece, in which he rejected the allure of Brexit and declared himself an ‘Anglosceptic’. He concluded: ‘In the days before empire, Henry VIII’s version of Brexit was to renounce Roman Catholicism and divorce Catherine of Aragon. A true sceptic in those days would have advised him to Bremain — and unite against the Turk.’ It’s an odd choice of illustration, because in that case Brexit did work, it paved the way for a stronger braver England, then Britain. It was the making of us. Tudor history is surely a precedent in the Brexiters’ favour. So can Boris dress up