Douglas Murray

One of the questions I most often get asked is: ‘What can I do?’  If you agree that actual liberals are the only palatable future in authoritarian societies and also recognise that they are a beleaguered minority, is there anything you can meaningfully do to help? Western governments are generally too busy doing business with authoritarian governments to focus on actual human rights abuses.  Meanwhile many groups at home which claim to care about human rights around the world are too busy attacking the world’s only democracies or defending extremists to have much time left for the real fight. But I have recently been introduced to an initiative which stands a good chance of providing an answer to that difficult readers' question.

It seems that the laughably misnamed ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ did not like my last piece. Indeed the Khomeinist organisation has written to complain to my editor.  Here is their letter: Dear Sir, I note that Douglas Murray's article published on your website yesterday has several points of concern. Most pressing is the fact that he suggests that the charity wing of IHRC organised the Islamophobia Awards. You are providing your readers will [sic] false information as this is not the case. I trust you will therefore make the correction immediately by removing all references to IHRC as a charity in the context of this article, which is all about the Islamophobia Awards.

I have always treated the ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ event with the scorn it deserves. Not least because each year this fantasy prize for a fantasy concept is run by a British Khomeinist organisation laughably named the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission.’  The nominees include anybody opposed to the agenda of Islamic extremists, including Muslims.  Of course each year, whilst laughing at it, those of us who are regular nominees also regard it as being to our great good fortune that the IHRC is a British charity operating in the United Kingdom rather than an Islamic charity operating in an Islamic country.  If the latter were the case then rather than laughing at the IHRC every year, those of us who it annually attacks would be hanging from cranes.

So the identity of 'Jihadi John' appears to have come out.  And surprise surprise he is a man associated with the group Cage (formerly Cage Prisoners).  The leaders of this group - Asim Qureshi and Cerie Bullivant - have been filling the airwaves ever since the naming of their friend Mohammed Emwazi. Qureshi even appeared to shed a tear as he talked about what a 'beautiful young man' his friend Jihadi John is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXuY_GR0pTQ I wonder if any scales have fallen from any eyes in the last 24 hours?  I do hope so. Cage is, after all, a group which has for years been introduced on the BBC, Channel 4 and so on as 'the human rights group Cage'.

Two years ago the Danish writer Helle Brix helped found the Lars Vilks Committee. The group of media figures from left and right came together to support the Swedish artist who has been under constant threat of death since drawing a picture of Mohammed in 2007. ‘We agreed that Mr Vilks should not be alone in the world,’ says Helle when we spoke earlier this week, ‘and if the establishment or the Swedish artists wouldn’t support him then we would. We wanted to give him a platform and a possibility to do what he used to do before he was unable to go out and meet the public because this is, of course, what disappears when you become a target, you get a lot of security around you and people are afraid to invite you.

It looks like this year’s Simon Hughes prize (awarded each year to the non-Muslim who does the weirdest impression of holding Islamic principle) must go to Lord Woolf. In a speech yesterday at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies the former Lord Chief Justice chose to explain why Muslim sensitivities should be especially respected.  He also used this pulpit to warn people in Britain not to exercise their rights as free citizens.  Here is an excerpt: ‘By now it must surely be appreciated that depicting the prophet in a derogatory way will cause grave offence among many Muslims and can lead to an explosive reaction with dreadful consequences.

I have spent most of the last fortnight debating Islam and blasphemy and wanted to take the opportunity to put down a few unwritten thoughts. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities most of the people who thought the journalists and cartoonists in some sense ‘had it coming to them’ kept their heads down.  I encountered a few who did not, including Asghar Bukhari from the MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committee).  In the aftermath of the atrocity Asghar was immediately eager to smear the cartoonists and editors of Charlie Hebdo as racists.