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.
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On Thursday I was on the BBC’s ‘This Week’ to talk about the CIA and torture. It is, for many reasons, perhaps the most gruesome subject possible. And not just because of the hideous allegations involved, but also because it is one of those subjects which people wantonly lose their reason over. Like a small
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I see that Isis have begun the holiday season by ‘executing’ (or murdering) a man who they say was homosexual in Syria/Iraq. They did this in the traditional manner, by throwing him off a tall building and then stoning him to death. They have helpfully provided photos of the process online. An accompanying statement from Isis reads: ‘Following
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She took the call herself the night the Islamic State came into Mosul. ‘Convert or leave or you’ll be killed,’ she was told. The callers, identifying themselves as Isis members, knew the household was Christian because her husband worked as a priest in the city. They fled that night. Like many of their Christian neighbours
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An interesting story in today’s papers: ‘Russia’s last politically independent TV station will be forced to close at the end of this month after the state-owned company that transmits its signal said it would be taken off the air.’ This comes at the same time, as our cover story last week showed, as Putin’s propaganda
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Earlier this week the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, suggested in the House of Lords that the next coronation service in Westminster Abbey should include readings from the Quran. The good Bishop and I had a chance to discuss his idea this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. You can listen to it
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A rather typical 24 hours in the life of modern Britain. Everyone does another round of ‘we need to be able to talk about immigration.’ The main parties once again say (as though this were a great revelation to the rest of us) that it is not racist to talk about immigration. The Labour and
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If anyone ever wondered what the over-promoted, incapable and incompetent Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was planning to do in retirement, now we know: provoke British Jews on Twitter. Today, after four Jews, one a British citizen, were butchered while praying in Israel, Sayeeda Warsi used the opportunity to taunt British Jews. Not just the Zionist Federation but
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I suppose this is the inevitable end-point of the ‘nothing to do with Islam’ meme. Another American citizen has had his head chopped off by a gang of men aspiring to instigate the teachings of Mohammed as they see them. And what does the President of the poor victim’s country say? Here is Obama on
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I fear I may be done for incitement.My friend and expert on all things ISIS, Shiraz Maher, alerts me to the fact that Abu Rumaysah has gone, apparently to fight in Syria. Shiraz and I last encountered him on the BBC programme Sunday Morning Live, alongside nobody’s idea of a push-over Dame Ann Leslie. (You
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In simple entertainment terms Citizenfour isn’t as interesting as watching paint dry. It is more like watching someone else watching paint dry. People with opinions on Edward Snowden tend to divide into those who think he’s one of the biggest heroes of all time and those who think he’s at least one of the worst
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_6_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Justin Marozzi, Douglas Murray and Fraser Nelson discuss immigration” startat=53] Listen [/audioplayer]It is the easiest thing in the world to say who should come to Britain and why. But if there are people who should be coming here, then surely there are others who should not? It is through our unwillingness to address
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Mats Persson and Matthew Elliott join James Forsyth to discuss Europe and migration.”] Listen [/audioplayer] Last week saw an example of the cynicism, not to mention circularity, of our immigration debate that is too important to miss. The former home secretary, David Blunkett, took to the pages of the Daily Mail to support
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Jonathan Sacks has an impressive track record for predicting the age we are in. In his 1990 Reith Lectures, ‘The Persistence of Faith’, the then chief rabbi pushed back against the dominant idea that religion was going to disappear. In the early 2000s, he predicted a century of conflict within Islam. And he was one
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The attacks in Canada probably seem non-sensical to some people. After all, much of the press and political class in the West has spent years trying to cover over the motivations of people like those who have spent this week targeting soldiers and politicians in Canada. ‘Why did they target Canada?’ headlines are asking today.
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What a godsend to Ukip José Manuel Barroso must be. On his recent short visit to the UK he not only managed to tell the British public that limits to immigration (desired by the overwhelming majority of the British public) would be ‘illegal’. He also managed to tell us that if we left the EU,
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Sean O’Callaghan and Govinda Clayton join Lara Prendergast to discuss talking to terrorists.” startat=808.5] Listen [/audioplayer] In a world often devoid of good news, there has been a fine development on the farthest-flung shores of insanity. The British National Union of Students aspires to represent students, though traditionally tends only to represent those
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Today in Parliament, MPs are voting on a backbench motion (supported by a one-line whip from the Labour party) proposing that Britain recognises Palestine as a state. The motion attempts push a new status quo on Israel-Palestine, without the agreement of the partners on the ground. This is not just an arrogant move, it is a pointless
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Clive James has published a new poem days before we meet. It opens, ‘Your death, near now, is of an easy sort’. It is about a Japanese maple his daughter has planted in the garden of his Cambridge home where we are sitting, and whether the poet will live to see the leaves flame red
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In advance of the Home Secretary’s speech today the Conservative party issued an advance briefing of its ‘new strategy for tackling extremism’. It was gratifying to see that a huge chunk of it credited a piece of mine from four and a half years ago. It is always gratifying when the political consensus catches up with
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‘We need new laws’ is a phrase most often heard from people who haven’t much bothered to investigate whether laws which are already on the books can be used. For some time I have suggested that it is inexplicable that laws like those which can be used against people for membership of a proscribed organisation
