Douglas Murray

A number of columnists have written recently about how we have all misunderstood ‘the Arab Spring’. Most prevalent among them has been the claim that when the current youth-bulge in these countries grows up they will in fact turn into capitalist entrepreneurs. I concede that it is possible. It would certainly be highly desirable. But as an idea it ignores the thing which secular Western commentators continuously ignore: that is the small matter of ideology. On this note, might I heartily recommend the following two videos?  The first is a recent Friday sermon from the Egyptian cleric Muhammad Zoghbi calling on Allah to annihilate the Jews and the Shiites. Viewers will notice how moved certain of his congregation are by these imprecations.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) Britain must bring millions more immigrants into the UK to sustain our ageing population. As the Telegraph reports it, the OBR study has found: ‘…. that allowing more than 140,000 immigrants into Britain a year, equivalent to 6million people, would help increase the overall number of people who are in work and improve public finances.’ The trouble with the OBR - like so many official and unofficial bodies - is that it views immigration solely as an issue of economics. And this despite the fact that the leaders of both the Conservative and Labour parties have conceded that immigration on the scale of recent years was not only wrong but is societally unsustainable.

A terrific debate last night at the Spectator: ‘Assad is a war criminal – the West must intervene in Syria.’ I don’t think there was any disagreement on the first part of the motion. But there certainly was on the second. I spoke in opposition to the motion and much of the argument I made is in a piece I’ve written for this morning’s Wall Street Journal which readers might be interested to read here.

Sadiq Khan MP had a piece in the Telegraph last week attacking an excellent piece by Charles Moore in the same paper the Saturday before. In his piece Sadiq makes a number of claims which are worth rebutting. First is his question, ‘Would we accept the Jewish community being talked about the way the Muslim community are?’ Well, as I have written here before, that would depend, among other things, on whether or not in recent years a bunch of fundamentalist Jews had detonated bombs across the London transport system or beheaded a soldier on the streets of London. It would also depend on whether cells of Jewish extremists had been caught, tried and prosecuted on a fairly regular basis for trying to kill and maim numerous British people.

There is a superb piece in the magazine this week by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, titled 'Atheism has failed: only religion can defeat the barbarians.'  Whether you agree with his diagnosis or his preferred remedy, it is a characteristically thought-provoking and vital piece. It is the third piece in the magazine this year to address this theme. In January there was a piece by me, 'Call off the faith wars: atheists vs Dawkins'.  Then in April came Theo Hobson's piece 'Richard Dawkins has lost: meet the new new atheists' I know there are some non-believers in particular who find this debate uncomfortable or frustrating.

Readers might like to know that I have a new book out today. It is called ‘Islamophilia: a very metropolitan malady’ and is available on kindle, e-readers and all that sort of thing. It is available from the publishers, emBooks here and from Amazon here. I will have more to say in the coming days, but in the meantime here is what the publisher – Melanie Phillips – has to say: 'This is not a book about Islam, Muslims or terrorism.

I thought readers might be interested in this piece from me in the new issue of Standpoint which is just out. It is titled 'Forget "Islamophobia". Let's tackle Islamism'. In the wake of recent attacks there has been an upsurge in claims of 'Islamophobia'. As I explain in the piece, even if such a thing as 'Islamophobia' did exist it would be a reactionary phenomenon. If we dealt with Islamism, then what is rightly or wrongly called 'Islamophobia' would disappear. The whole piece is here.

Readers may like to know that I have a cover piece in this week's magazine titled 'The Enemy Within'.  It is available here for subscribers. (Non-subscribers can subscribe here.) It looks at what - if anything - will change after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich. It is also an account of just some of the difficulties going on inside the British government in the fight against extremism. On a separate but related note, my colleague at the Henry Jackson Society, Robin Simcox was testifying in front of the US House of Representatives last week. His testimony is here. Robin is one of the authors of our latest report on Al-Qaeda related terrorism in the US.