“It is a common refrain of pious Muslims in the face of atrocities done by other Muslims in the name of Islam that Islam must not be shamed: whenever an atrocity potentially dishonors Islam, non-Muslims are asked to agree that ‘This is not Islamic’ so...
In this interview I suffered a slip of the tongue and at one point said that Islam permits a man to have five wives. Of course the correct limit for the number of wives is four! Also, when I referred to Islam permitting sex with young...
Tony Blair delivered a major speech on April 23 entitled, “Why the Middle East Matters”. In summary, he argued that the Middle East, far from being a “vast unfathomable mess” is deep in the throes of a multi-faceted struggle between a specific religious ideology on...
This is an interesting article by Theo Hobson in the Spectator in which he argues that atheism is failing on two counts. First it is not able to offer a coherent and satisfying morality, and second it is blind to the fact that the morality...
Western nations are facing what has been called an “epidemic” of forced marriages of their young Muslim women. While those who compel young Muslim women and girls into marriages could be charged with human trafficking offences and also in some cases placed on the national...
Recent reports of under-age marriages in Australia are evidence that the authorities need to do more to enforce marriage laws in Western nations, and to restrict the practice of unregistered ‘clandestine’ religious marriages, particularly Islamic marriages. Two cases recently came to public attention of NSW girls...
In What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis charted the decline of Islam in the modern era and the resulting theological crisis for the Muslim world. Now Islam is going through a second crisis, caused by the repeated failures of revivalist responses to the first crisis. This second...
Andrew Brown of the Guardian has commented on my response to A Guide to Refuting Jihadism, which was published on my blog, and also on Lapido Media. Brown writes: Can you dissuade fanatical jihadis using theological argument? by Andrew Brown (as revised on Feb 10, 2014) It doesn't really...