OK, imagine for one moment that you are a grandmother and you wish to register your anger over recent comments made by Sydney’s Sheikh Taj al-Hilaly. You want to send a powerful message that you are not a piece of uncovered meat. What do you do? That’s right. First, you wait a few weeks until...Read More

Turkey is often held up by some unimaginative politicians and commentators as a successful reconciliation of Islam and secularism that the rest of the Muslim world should imitate. Perhaps the treatment of Turkish libertarian academic Dr. Atilla Yalya — no “Islamist” by any means — for simply referring to Ataturk as “this man” will give...Read More

Although it is quite expensive by the time it reaches the shelves of my local Borders store, City Journal is nonetheless a very worthwhile investment as a magazine filled with incisive and useful social commentary. In the latest issue is a nice essay by Theodore Dalrymple on the subject of language; responding, in part, to...Read More

Is Islamism, Islam ? I define Islamism as the twentieth century political movement to instill “Islamic” governments in Muslim countries. The intellectual architects of this movement were Sayyid Qutb, Maududi, Ayatollah Khomeini and Hassan al-Turabi, amongst others. They have formed the political and governance template for movements in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, Somali, Sudan...Read More