Da Masked Avenger

  • Laïcité comes to London

    [For the background to this article see here and here] “May I take ten minutes of my lunchbreak to perform a short prayer ritual that doesn’t interfere with or affect anybody else?” You’d think the response of any bien-pensant teacher to such an innocuous request would surely be, “of course!”, especially in a school that…

  • A Dangerous Dalliance: Far-Right Extremism Meets Muslim Platforms

    In a disturbing development, Nick Griffin, a notorious activist in far-right extremism, appeared on a prominent Muslim podcast. This event has sparked fears of reinforcing harmful stereotypes about Muslims and their perceived antisemitism. This dangerous narrative justifies aggression against Palestinians and unravels decades of positive Islamic outreach in Britain at a time when interest in…

  • Nick Griffin

    Note: a short form version of this piece is available here. The recent appearance of Nick Griffin, on a popular British Muslim podcast presents a salutary reminder of the dangers of “my enemy’s enemy” thinking. A grandee of the far-right movement and one of its senior ideologues, the potential repercussions of inviting him on were…

  • Douglas Murray

    I vacillated for several days over whether to write this piece. I’m all too aware that in contrast to the countless thousands who regularly (and with alarming alacrity) digest Douglas Murray’s ravings, precious few will likely read my rejoinder. Ultimately I decided it was incumbent upon me to do so. And though my audience is…

  • What value the truth?

    The mid-40s is a strange phase of your life. Old enough to have adult children and old enough to pass down (much to their chagrin) the accumulated wisdom of the previous two decades. But not yet old enough to concede that the glamour and vitality of youth has indeed deserted you (well almost); for though…

  • The options open to Israel

    As Israel gears up to launch another brutal assault on Gaza I thought I’d present a succinct analysis of the underpinning conflict and the options available to it. Casting aside moral inhibitions, the first of those three options will be hard to carry out for multiple reasons as well as being inherently very risky. Though…

  • Open Letter to the Police Chiefs of England and Wales

    Chief Constables England and Wales Copied to Police and Crime Commissioners England and Wales I am writing to you with respect to the recent rambling communication you received from the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. As edifying as you no doubt found her refresher on proscription offences, I feel compelled to counsel that her accompanying advice was not…

  • On the morality of settler-colonialism

    This piece poses a moral question to the reader and is not in any way an approval or glorification of any acts of terrorism (as defined by the Terrorism Act 2000) whatsoever. In the decades after the conclusion of the War of Independence, freed from the 1763 Royal Proclamation that fixed the border of the…

  • Russell Brand

    I admit I don’t know all that much about Russell Brand so I’ll start with what I do. He first came to my attention back in 2008 as a result of the controversy resulting from the vulgar voicemails he and Jonathan Ross left for Fawlty Towers actor, Andrew Sachs. A career in Hollywood then followed and by…

  • The LGBT ‘community’ are not our allies

    Despite the bold (and predictably unevidenced) claims of a soi-disant ‘radical Muslim’ Yale Professor, the Shariah categorically outlaws homosexual sexual relations. For thirteen centuries there was no “difference of interpretation” on this matter – hardly surprising given that the Quran’ic and hadith evidence for its prohibition are decisive – until the advent of the postmodern…