Isis

Granted, you don’t really expect foreign policy to feature much in an election campaign – we’re not saints – but it’s still shaming the way that the biggest foreign policy issue simply doesn’t register on the radar right now. I refer obviously to Islamic State, the group that just keeps on giving when it comes to reasons to want them wiped out. It’s a toss up really whether you go for the recently exhumed mass graves of the soldiers they massacred in Tikrit, the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp they seized control of, the images they obligingly posted of themselves smashing artefacts at Hatra or the blowing up an Assyrian church over

Sweden’s latest attempts to integrate its migrant population have suffered one or two hiccups after it was learned that staff at its ‘assimilation guide service’ were recruiting people into the Islamic State. A partial success, then. According to a recent BBC report, the Scandinavian country now tops the European jihadi league, although others give Belgium that honour. Presumably all those Swedes joining the Islamic State have been radicalised by their country’s relentless military aggression; after all we’re always being told British foreign policy is to blame for our extremism problem. The number of Isis fighters from around the world illustrates that the Iraq-Syria conflict is the first war in the age

 Washington DC and Iraq   We stood on a bleak hillside in eastern Iraq looking at a makeshift grave. It held a dozen Shia Arabs, according to the Kurdish troops escorting us. The dead were men, women and children murdered by fighters from the so-called Islamic State as they retreated, said the Kurds. We stepped gingerly around scraps of women’s clothing and a bone poking out through the dirt. In the town on the dusty plain below, Shi’ite militias were busy taking revenge on Sunnis, our escorts said, looting and killing. The town’s Sunni Arab population had fled to a miserable camp. Streams of sewage ran between their tents. But

Today a quick game of ‘spot the difference.’ First, here are some photos, released yesterday, of Isis pulling down the crosses on ancient churches and desecrating Christian holy sites in Mosul, Iraq. They admit to doing this because they wish to destroy all records of pre-Islamic civilisation and because, they say, they are following Islamic law. And then secondly we have Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti speaking at a conference in Kuwait on Tuesday. There Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, called for the destruction of all churches on the Arabian peninsula. He explained that this is necessitated by Islamic law. So perhaps the first part of the game should

Last month, the government’s Counter-Terrorism & Security Bill became law. One provision is the legal obligation it places upon ‘specified authorities’ to ‘prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. ‘Specified authorities’ includes universities, whose vice-chancellors made several interventions as the legislation made its way through Parliament. The Education (No.2) Act of 1996 places a duty on universities and colleges to ‘ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers’. University professors (myself included) pointed out very publicly that the Counter-Terrorism Bill, as originally drafted, seemed not to take account of this obligation. We were grateful that the House of

The Iraqi military’s attempt to retake Tikrit from Islamic State tells us several things about the current politics of the region. First, the Iraqi state is heavily reliant on the Iranians for military assistance. The Iranian Fars News Agency has reported that this assault is being backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard including the commander of its elite Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Reuters says that Soleimani can be seen directing operations from a hill and that his presence is crucial in terms of controlling the Iraqi Shi’ite militias, many of whom are Iranian trained. Second, there is a danger that Islamic State might succeed in precipitating the sectarian

Isis has a new bête noir: Twitter. Employees at the social media company have received death threats, as has Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter. Why? Because the site has been blocking accounts linked to the group. In retaliation, Isis members posted an image on the website JustPaste.it which warned that Dorsey and co had ‘Become a target for the soldiers of the Caliphate and supporters scattered among your midst!’ The message reads: ‘You started this failed war … We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back. But when our lions come and take your breath, you will