Islam

Hanif Kureishi – portrait of the artist as a young man

13 January 2024 9:00 am

Descriptions of the gifted author tearing up the literary landscape of the late 20th century are deeply poignant when set alongside Kureishi’s recent despatches from hospital

How dangerous is the Sunni-Shia schism?

6 January 2024 9:00 am

What unites the two groups is more fundamental than what divides them, says Barnaby Rogerson, and the more serious conflict among Muslims concerns ethnicity and language

The ‘historic’ national dishes which turn out to be artful PR exercises

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade

This production needs more dosh: Good, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…

A masterpiece: P Word, at Park Theatre, reviewed

24 September 2022 9:00 am

Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’?…

Why is violence breaking out in Leicester?

19 September 2022 5:34 am

Just what is going on in Leicester? Last night violence broke out in the city after hundreds of young men…

Salman Rushdie was never safe

19 August 2022 9:36 pm

The stabbing of Salman Rushdie sends a renewed message to the world: take Islamism – the transformation of the Islamic…

The madness of France’s burkini bust-up

19 May 2022 6:35 pm

To burkini, or not to burkini? This is the question that divides France in the run-up to the first round…

Putin and the Muslim world

21 March 2022 1:02 am

Several thousand Muslim Chechen fighters are reportedly massing on the edge of Kiev. Syrian volunteers, filmed this week holding assault…

Staggeringly confident and powerful: After Love reviewed

12 February 2022 9:00 am

As there are no stand-out films this week aside from Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Death on the Nile — is…

Were the Ottoman Turks as European as they thought themselves?

20 November 2021 9:00 am

This is the best of times to be writing history, since so much of what has been taken for granted,…

The Council of Europe was right to pull its hijab campaign

5 November 2021 10:25 pm

This week, the Council of Europe was forced to pull an advertising campaign promoting the hijab following a backlash from…

The war that changed the world in the early seventh century

18 September 2021 9:00 am

It was not a war to end all wars, writes James Howard-Johnston at the start of this illuminating and thought-provoking…

Pakistan's profane blasphemy laws

11 August 2021 11:21 am

An eight-year-old Hindu boy is currently in custody in the southern Punjab. He is the youngest person in Pakistan to…

Tehran is repeating the Shah's mistakes

22 July 2021 8:11 am

The Iranian province of Khuzestan is oil-rich but water-poor. At the best of times, the southwestern region is a problem…

Leave, convert or perish: The fate of Afghanistan's minorities

10 July 2021 10:11 am

President Biden’s decision to ‘end the war in Afghanistan’ means the complete withdrawal of 3,500 US troops by the 20th…

Is anywhere in the world still safe for China’s Uighurs?

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Is anywhere safe for the Uighurs?

Labour's worrying descent into communalism

23 June 2021 12:26 am

Labour’s candidate in Batley and Spen, Kim Leadbeater, reportedly pulled out of a hustings featuring George Galloway over the weekend.…

Austria's 'Islam map' is dangerous

3 June 2021 7:35 pm

Austria’s government has unveiled a map detailing the locations of mosques and other Muslim associations all over the country. The…

The empire that sprang from nowhere under the banner of Islam

29 May 2021 9:00 am

When the British formed the basis of their empire in the 1600s by acquiring territories in India and North America,…

The Tories, Islam, and the importance of pluralism

25 May 2021 8:52 pm

The Conservatives will be relieved that an independent investigation has not found the party to be institutionally racist, though relief…

What the demise of Quilliam teaches us about Britain and Islam

17 April 2021 9:00 am

There was much rejoicing among Britain’s Islamists last week when the thinktank and campaigning organisation Quilliam announced that it was…

Why will nobody publish my religious cartoons?

3 April 2021 9:00 am

I am having very little success in getting my collection of cartoons of great religious founders published. Perhaps it is…

Why Muslims like me are worried about the Batley protests

2 April 2021 6:00 pm

To some, the persecution of a schoolteacher who showed his pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed may seem like…

Bangladesh could pay for failing to crack down on its Islamist threat

31 March 2021 12:15 am

Bangladesh turned 50 last week and the country has much to celebrate. Having inherited a dismal GDP growth rate of…