Isis
A dark journey into a fanatical underworld
Two years ago, the counter-extremist analyst Julia Ebner decided she needed to delve deeper into the extremists trying to disrupt…
Netflix's Messiah is a great concept undermined by implausible politics
Sky’s latest bingewatch potboiler Cobra can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to be an arch, knowing House…
My fear about the next generation of jihadists
I’ve just finished reading William Manchester’s absorbing memoir about the Pacific War. ‘Goodbye Darkness’ is a reminder of just how…
Trump honors hero dog Conan. Media goes barking mad
There are a few scenes from the Trump presidency which belong in the pantheon of great American political imagery. There…
Portrait of the week: An election date is set, al-Baghdadi dies and a row over gay giraffes
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, having shelved his Brexit Bill in the face of parliamentary opposition, persuaded the Commons…
Donald Trump’s shameful Syrian betrayal
Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria is one of the most shortsighted foreign policy miscalculations in recent memory.…
It’s unfair for Britain to take Tooba Gondal and other Isis brides back
I am sure that Tooba Gondal, the latest Isis bride to beg for a return to Britain, would, as she…
Lap-dancing with ISIS, the real Monica Lewinsky and one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen: Edinburgh Fringe roundup
Clive Anderson’s show about Macbeth, ‘the greatest drama ever written’, offers us an hour of polished comedy loosely themed around…
The European fighters who battled Isis – and were abandoned by their governments
Foreign fighters are returning from the battlefield — not Islamists but the Americans, Europeans and South Americans who fought to…
The brutality of the Isis Beatles
Beirut Television cameras get everywhere these days. Or maybe that was always true. Gore Vidal, the grand old man of…
Why we must make an example of Shamima Begum
The three most popular justifications for punishment under the law all (as it happens) begin with R. They are retribution,…
I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
The true face of Islam won’t be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but at the British Museum
In Britain today, Islam in its original essence is not to be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but on…
And I think to myself, not a wonderful world…
The story of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan is an interesting one, I think, for what it tells us about…
The tragedy of Syria: how protest spiralled into savagery
The fateful day five years ago began like any other for the family. A pot of black tea with cardamon…
How can any intelligent person have faith?
Ten years ago, I had a strange debate about faith with a famous Jesuit and an agnostic psychoanalyst in a…
Returning jihadis must be brought to justice
At first sight, the evidence presented in David Anderson’s report into the four terror attacks committed between March and June…
Prince Harry announces his engagement to US actress Meghan Markle
Home The engagement was announced of Prince Henry of Wales, aged 33, and the Los Angeles-born Meghan Markle, an actress…
Britain and its allies are opening the way for yet another Iraq war
After the most intensive street-by-street combat since 1945, Isis’s so-called caliphate is no more. Last weekend, the Iraqi government won…
Accept this as the new normal? Never
Not long after the Parsons Green Tube bombing, another of those viral, defiant-in-the-face-of-terror cartoons started doing the rounds. It was…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
Sarah Kane's Cleansed is a thin, vicious pantomime
Big fuss about Cleansed at the Dorfman. Talk of nauseous punters rushing for the gangways may have perversely delighted the…
The myth of the plucky Kurdish warrior
Western powers’ favourite allies in Iraq and Syria have problems – and divisions – of their own
My tyre-fitter tried to recruit me as a jihadi bride
The last time I bought a set of tyres in south London I came away not quite knowing whether I…
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