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.
Written after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January and revised after the Paris attacks in November, Douglas Murray’s piece on politicians’ responses to Islamic terror attacks was The Spectator‘s third most read article of 2015: The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each
We’re closing 2015 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No10: Douglas Murray’s piece about Islam and violence, first written in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks but read most (and shared most widely) after the Bataclan atrocity. The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully,
The findings of the UK government’s review into the Muslim Brotherhood have finally been published. Commissioned by the Prime Minister in April 2014, the full report will not be released. Although the review finds that the Muslim Brotherhood does not meet the threshold of violence which would see it proscribed in the UK, it described members of
Some days the world is so stupid that getting out of bed seems to carry too many risks. Today, thanks to the Independent, the bottom of the stupid-pool has been reached. The ‘paper’ has just run a piece by one George Greenwood headlined: ‘Labour-IRA attitude under scrutiny as Young Fabians invite former terror commander to be guest
The term ‘victim blaming’ is most commonly used to describe people who claim that a woman walking out in a short skirt is ‘asking to be raped.’ But even this claim is not quite as gut-wrenching as the claim that some people are ‘asking to be killed’ or once killed are effectively ‘guilty of their
A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with the American author and neuroscientist Sam Harris. He is one of the few people on the political left in Europe or America who recognises the problem of Islamic extremism and doesn’t mind talking about it. For this he gets – I think it is safe to say
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreendelusion/media.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Steph Smith discuss whether all young politicians are oddballs” startat=1130] Listen [/audioplayer]Whenever the curtain is pulled back on youthful political activism, the picture is ugly. Three years ago, in Young, Bright and On the Right, the BBC followed students at Oxbridge fighting like vipers to get ahead in their university
I don’t often get a chance to write about wonderful things. For various reasons these days I mainly find myself writing about a wide-range of lies and atrocities. But I did want to take a moment out from that routine to acknowledge something wonderful happening in London. The Donmar Theatre is currently heading to the
Two weeks after Paris we finally have some clarity from the political left. The current stance of their leadership (as expressed in the Parliamentary Labour party) is that while there is no justification for bombing ISIS, there are many reasons to bomb London. On the same evening that Jeremy Corbyn told his party that he
Another day and another group of men from an unknown religion storm into a hotel shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. This time in Mali. Once again they take hostages. And once again they free only those who can recite the Quran. Of course our Home Secretary Theresa May along with the President and Secretary of State in
Various readers have been asking if I am doing Question Time, This Week or Any Questions this week. It’s not the BBC’s fault but I’m not able to be in the country at the moment. I am particularly sorry not to be able to do Question Time now that I learn that the line-up includes
In the wake of the massacre in Paris, President François Hollande said that France was ‘at war’ — and that it must be fought both inside his country and outside in the Middle East. As the French air force began dropping bombs on Raqqa in Syria, another operation was under way in towns and cities
One step forward, one step back. Theresa May says in Parliament that the Paris attacks have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. And on the same day, later in the evening, her boss quite rightly says: ‘It is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection
A huge number of nonsense goes around after atrocities like those in Paris. The media and social media are full of them. I thought it might be helpful to list the worst. ‘This attack has nothing to do with Islam’: obviously not true. See here. ‘Islam means peace’: Very obviously not true. Incidentally the word actually
The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have
A wave of terror attacks has rocked Paris tonight with a restaurant, a stadium and a concert hall amongst the targets. Gunmen fired into Bataclan concert hall shouting “Allahu akbar,” according to France24, and then proceeded to hold hostages; French police then went in hard and some reports have suggested that up to 100 may have
Excellent news, if it is confirmed, that Mohammed Emwazi – aka ‘Jihadi John’ – has discovered the hard way that seventy-two virgins have not been waiting around for him on a cloud. It is more than a year since David Cameron announced that this country would chase the murderer of British, American and Japanese aid-workers
When Hugh and Mirabel Cecil’s book In Search of Rex Whistler was published in 2012, the late Brian Sewell reviewed it with typical insight and lack of generosity. Despite recognising the artist as an extraordinary talent and perhaps the inventor of neo-romanticism, he regretted that Whistler would never be taken sufficiently seriously and pronounced it
The farcically named ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ has featured here many times before. The last time was earlier this year when this Khomeinist group decided to award their ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award to the murdered staff of Charlie Hebdo. At their ‘awards ceremony’ for this the IHRC even joked about what a shame it
The ‘Stop the War coalition’ is no such thing. It is a meeting point for hardline Stalinists and Islamists to pursue their own imperial policies. Anyone in any doubt of this need merely consider the organisation’s leadership and history. Currently their membership’s views on Syria seem to range from those supporting Russian intervention in Syria
