The Spectator

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The Spectator

Spectator letters: Islam and the roots of radicalism

From our UK edition

The roots of radicalism Sir: Qanta Ahmed is to be praised for her dissection of Islamism and her call for a reformation of Islam (‘Let there be light’, 17 January). That call has been muted for decades but is now growing louder, and it is right to promote Muslims who see a way forward out of their current predicament. But her view of an ‘authentic Islam’ that is untainted by Islamist interpretation is surprisingly naive. Islamists do not, in fact, distort classical Islam to the extent that Ahmed suggests. Offensive jihad is a doctrine in the Quran and was a practice of Mohammed. Harsh sharia laws pre‑date modern Islamism by many centuries.

The Spectator

Don’t believe the gloom-mongers: deflation will be good for Britain

From our UK edition

Campaigning in Putney in 1978, Mrs Thatcher famously took out a pair of scissors and cut a pound note down the middle, telling her audience that the remaining stump represented what was left of the pound in your pocket after four years of Labour and high inflation. David Cameron may soon be able to repeat the stunt — except rather than cutting a note in half he will be able to stick a bit on the end to represent the extra buying power being granted to consumers courtesy of deflation. Inflation on the government’s preferred measure, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), has fallen to 0.5 per cent. With the price of crude oil slumping and a supermarket price war in full cry, it may well dip below zero in coming months. That is to say: the cost of living is about to fall.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 22 January 2015

From our UK edition

Home More than 1,100 imams and Islamic leaders received a letter from Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the communities minister, saying: ‘We must show our young people, who may be targeted, that extremists have nothing to offer them.’ Imran Khawaja, from Southall, west London, who had posed for a picture in Syria with a severed head before trying to re-enter Britain, pleaded guilty to four terrorism offences and will be sentenced next month. Sir John Chilcot confirmed that the report of his inquiry into the Iraq war, which took its last evidence in 2011, would not be published until after the election. A workers’ dispute left 1,300 houses in Northern Ireland without water; some people boiled snow.

The Spectator

The surprising truth about global inequality

From our UK edition

Poor data Oxfam complained of an ‘inequality explosion’, citing an estimate that by next year 1 per cent of the world’s population will own half the wealth, but little other evidence. Is global inequality really growing, and does it matter? — There have been few estimates of global inequality in income and wealth, but one recent one was contained in a Unicef report in 2011 which revealed that on some measures global inequality is falling. In 1990, it claimed that the wealthiest 20% of people on the planet received 87% of global income. By 2007 that had fallen to 83%. Over the same period the poorest fifth of the population saw their share of wealth increase from 0.8% to 1%.