John Jenkins

‘Danegeld’. Such an ugly word, don’t you think? So, what should we call it instead? Reparations, or Project Spire perhaps? A reckoning with the past? Grown-up politics for a grown-up nation? Or, as Charles Ryder’s father might have said over the breakfast table, let’s just say it’s the right thing to do, and leave it at that. Only, it has been the wrong thing to do since the lamentable Aethelred the Unready in the ninth century paid marauding Danes to go away – only to see them pocket his money and come back for more. And it was that lesson which the inimitable Rudyard Kipling drew for the modern age in his poem ‘Danegeld’, written a century ago, at another time of profound national unease.

Many readers of The Spectator will never have heard of John Esposito, who died in Philadelphia on 15 July. Why should they? At various times he was a professor of religious, international, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, first at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and then at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he was also director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. As a side-hustle, he was editor-in-chief of – inter alia – The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam and The Oxford History of Islam.

Sir John Jenkins was invited by the Government-appointed 'Working Group' to offer his views on a proposed definition of 'Islamophobia'. Here is his response to Dominic Grieve, the Group's chair: Dear Dominic Grieve,  It is kind of you to seek my views on 'whether a definition [of Islamophobia] would be helpful'. I have some fundamental reservations about both the process you are overseeing and its likely trajectory. I owe you the courtesy of explaining what these are. I remain unconvinced that anything I might say would make a difference to the Working Group on Anti Muslim Hatred/ Islamophobia Definition’s deliberations. But I am always open to being persuaded otherwise.

Earlier this month, the UAE announced it was sanctioning 11 individuals and eight rather obscure organisations for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The UAE proscribed the MB as a terrorist group in 2014, so you might be forgiven for thinking this was routine. But it wasn’t. All eight organisations were based in the UK. Normally this works the other way round: the UK bans or sanctions entities elsewhere. Having an Arab country – especially one we claim as a friend – do that in reverse should set alarm bells ringing. There was a brief flurry of press interest, then silence.  The Muslim Brotherhood is the mothership of all modern Islamisms In early 2014 David Cameron commissioned me to deliver a policy review of the Muslim Brotherhood.

At times like this, it’s tempting to channel Bette Davis: only speak good of the dead. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s dead. Good. But perhaps the moment deserves some more considered reflection. There’s striking footage (see below) of al-Zawahiri in the defendants’ cage during the 1982 trial of Islamic Jihad members implicated in the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat. Al-Zawahiri alone speaks in English for the cameras. He is uncompromising and belligerent. But his command of the language of international communication reveals his background: educated and middle class. That made him different to most of his fellow accused. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY3nM9I19c4 He had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood since adolescence.

Among the most evocative and distressing press images of the year were those of Maryam Nuri Hama Amin. The 24-year-old Kurd from Soran, in northeastern Iraq, drowned along with 26 others in the Channel last month. In photographs published after her death, she is seen at her engagement party smiling at the camera in a park, by a lake, amid fallen leaves. She looks beautiful, bright, confident and full of hope. If you read reports and trawl through Twitter, you’ll find that many believe Maryam was a victim of a heartless international order, of European xenophobia, of the British government’s inability to manage its own affairs properly. But how did she come to end up in a dinghy that would sink in the cold waters of the Channel?

It's been more than a fortnight since the bombing of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, and there remain plenty of unanswered questions. It is a sign of the challenge authorities face that even establishing something as basic as the nationality of the man killed in the blast, Emad Al Swealmeen, has proved difficult. There is also much uncertainty over the circumstances surrounding Al Swealmeen's conversion to Christianity. Al Swealmeen is believed to have entered the UK from Dubai, and his claim for asylum was rejected soon afterwards. Permission to appeal was refused, but, in 2017, Al Swealmeen converted to Christianity. This year, he applied for asylum under the name Enzo Almeni, claiming his Christian faith would put his life in danger in the Middle East.

Has the Taliban really changed its spots? Those who advocate talking to the Taliban make the case that they have. The organisation, they say, has recognised the mistakes it made in the years culminating in 9/11. Others claim that the organisation is now committed to local and national aims, not international terrorism, and that the Taliban have – or can be moderated – via the tool of engagement. All of these approaches seem to share the view there is a disconnect between the west’s reaction to events in Afghanistan, and the reality. But is this really the case?  Pakistan's national security adviser, Dr Moeed W Yusuf, has suggested the time has come to face facts: we need to accept the Taliban has won, negotiate with them and treat them as partners.

It’s always the French, isn’t it? Not content with having given the modern world existentialism, structuralism, deconstructionism (with some help from the Belgians) and Marxist psychoanalytic, they have also, it seems, produced something called Islamo-gauchisme — allegedly an unholy alliance between some on the left and Islamists. And a lot of people are very cross about this. Or rather, cross with President Macron and his ministers for daring to suggest first that Islamo-gauchisme is actually a thing, then that it might represent a threat to the cohesion of the Fifth Republic — indeed the western liberal order as a whole — and that it, therefore, needs to be resisted.

How time flies. In March 2014, quite out of the blue, I was commissioned by then prime minister David Cameron to lead an internal review designed to inform and improve the government’s understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s been six years since I delivered what has become known as the Muslim Brotherhood Review. And on 17 December, it will be exactly five years since Cameron reported on its main conclusions to the House of Commons. I made it clear before I started that if I accepted the commission, I would need the freedom to conduct my own research, travel widely and have proper support within Whitehall. I would look at Islamism in the round, not simply the Brotherhood variety.