Douglas Murray

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_April_2014_v4.mp3" title="Douglas Murray and Julie Bindel discuss monogamy in gay marriages" startat=665] Listen [/audioplayer]As inexorably as night follows day and push comes to shove, so the words ‘Tory’ and ‘scandal’ seem destined to conjoin with ‘Brazilian’ and ‘rent-boy’. Yet the main response to the allegations about Mark Menzies MP last weekend was neither laughter or condemnation, but pity. The tone was similar to that recently adopted by Jeremy Paxman when interviewing the disgraced former Co-op chairman Paul Flowers. How sad, it seemed to sigh, in this day and age. Is there anything we can do?

A number of interesting things have happened recently: The Law Society has provided legal guidance to ensure that Muslims in Britain can have their wills judged according to Sharia. BBC Newsnight hosted an in-studio row between three Muslims over whether one Muslim should be allowed to say or do anything that is deemed religiously insensitive by any other Muslim. Majority opinion seemed to be ‘no’. Then there has been huge excitement that, after decades during which tens of thousands of girls in Britain were genitally mutilated, charges have for the first time been brought against some suspected perpetrators of this horrific crime. Just in case anyone is lost in all this – this is Britain in 2014. So what do these things have in common?

BBC3’s Free Speech programme is a good example of why the channel deserves to be shut down. Aimed at giving a voice to young people it is endlessly dumbing-down, seeks validity through instant Twitter reactions and all in all is a very degrading programme to appear on. I know because a couple of years ago I was on the first series and spent an evening at an ice rink in Doncaster debating the key issues of the day with a ‘Page 3 model’ and Owen Jones. Even now it makes me shiver. Anyhow – last night the show came from outside the Birmingham Central mosque. The panel included Mehdi Hasan and Julie Burchill’s friend, Paris Lees, who complained in the early part of the show that nobody had given her a job.

I was robbed! News has just come in that despite making the shortlist I failed to win ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ in any of the categories. Proving once again that Ayatollah Khomeini was a big fat liar when he said there are ‘no jokes’ in Islam, the Khomeinist ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ last night named President Obama as overall ‘Islamophobe of the Year’. Various other continent-specific categories were closed to me, though it is interesting to note that Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi stormed the ‘Asia and Australia’ section. Yet the UK results are cause for most bitterness. The shortlist apparently consisted of Theresa May, Maajid Nawaz, Raheem Kassam and me. My money was on Maajid.

I have been honoured to receive a number of awards in my career. Yet one which I have especially yearned for has so far eluded me. Now it seems finally within my grasp. Since I began writing I have dearly hoped to catch the eye of the judges for the ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ title. There are a number of reasons. Firstly because one of its earliest recipients was Polly Toynbee. Anything that Polly wins is something I covet. Secondly, I have always desired the award because the term ‘Islamophobia’ itself is so fantastical and ridiculous. Winning an award with it in the title would be like waking up to discover I had been given a prize by the Queen of Wonderland.

On Friday a Taliban suicide bomber detonated in downtown Kabul in the doorway of a Lebanese restaurant which was popular with foreigners. Two accomplices then went into the restaurant and gunned down the people inside. The victims included a Labour party candidate for the forthcoming European elections, the IMF’s country director and a young Afghan couple. They also included a friend and colleague, Alexandros Petersen. Educated in London, Alex worked for some years at the Henry Jackson Society as well as at the Atlantic Council and the Woodrow Wilson Center. He had recently joined the political science faculty of the American University in Afghanistan.

‘What are people in your country saying about Holland these days?’ one Dutch friend recently asked me. I hadn’t the heart to reply that no one was talking that much about his country. But the question seemed typically Dutch. Endlessly outward-looking and interested, yet charmingly insular and with a slightly off-kilter view of itself. The Dutch character — like the country — is fascinating for that cocktail of conservatism and libertinism, strict rule-making and anarchism which runs through it. Foreign tourism there has undoubtedly suffered in recent years from an exaggeration of just one side of that complex character. And although this seems mercifully to have declined in recent years, Amsterdam remains a victim of its culture of licence.

Today’s Times has a lovely example of positive spin.  The headline is: ‘Rise in Muslim birth rate as families ‘feel British’. The story which gives rise to this headline is that: ‘Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, a breakdown of census figures shows.  'The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. In an indication of the extent to which birth rate is changing the UK’s religious demographic, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 is Muslim.  'One expert said it was foreseeable that Muslims who worshipped would outnumber practising Christians.’  Incidentally – I have previously written about this story here and here.

There is a new series of BBC Radio 3's discussion programme 'Belief'. Some readers may be interested in this episode in which I am interviewed by Joan Bakewell. It was recorded before Christmas and went out a few days ago. In any case, I much recommend the other programmes in the series, particularly those with Ian McEwan and Diarmaid MacCulloch.