“Islamophobia”

Good on Nick Timothy for smoking out the hypocrisy, muddled thinking and cant that obscures the debate over Islamism in Britain. He must have known the furore that would follow when he branded the Muslim prayer session in Trafalgar Square an ‘act of domination’. He must have known it would attract the worst and weakest criticisms from the worst and weakest people. And lo it came to pass.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani joins a crowd of Muslims who took over Prospect Park and held a public prayer session.

This is New York City now.pic.twitter.com/MolkeCbNHt

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 20, 2026

Would you rather live in a society where a man is free to criticise religious practices or one where such a man might be dragged to the public square to be damned and shamed as a blasphemer? For me it’s a no-brainer. It’s the former. I want the freedom to object, as scurrilously as I like, to every pious ritual and godly doctrine. We used to call it ‘freedom of thought’, and our ancestors gave their lives to gift us that most cherished of liberties.

It’s the Islamic holy month, when it’s a terrible insult to Muslims who are praying and fasting to bomb a rogue state that threatens the U.S. and its allies, right? Ilhan Omar said that. Yet as Ramadan draws to a close this year, the jihad death toll worldwide is 499 infidels murdered in 133 jihad attacks. No adherents of any other religion, or even any “right-wing extremists,” committed any terror attacks during this period.

Muslims in Britain have a more favourable view of Communist China, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the theocratic Islamist regime in Iran than the United States, a poll has found.

According to a survey by JL Partners for the Policy Exchange Think Tank, which polled a nationally representative sample of 2,223 adults in Britain, as well as 1,031 Muslims living in the UK, found a stark difference in worldview.

It’s not ‘Islamophobic’ to feel unsettled by these mass displays of religiosity in shared public spaces.

Of all the attractions of central London, a mass Islamic call to prayer is not one you would find listed in most guidebooks. But that is nonetheless the spectacle that more than a few perplexed tourists would have found themselves witnessing on Monday night in Trafalgar Square. Beneath Nelson’s Column, in front of the National Gallery, a large crowd of Muslims knelt in pious observance. There, facing the St-Martin-in-the-Fields church, London mayor Sadiq Khan and a few hundred fellow Muslims performed a public adhan to mark the end of Ramadan.

On the evening of July 7, 2005, Tony Blair sought to reassure a shattered nation with the following promise. The terrorists, he vowed, would never win. “When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated,” declared the then prime minister. “When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed.”

Stirring words. Sadly, however, they proved to be flatly untrue. Two decades later, it’s becoming ever clearer that the terrorists are indeed winning, that we are indeed intimidated, and that they have indeed succeeded in changing our country and our way of life. And if anyone doubts it, let me point out that we are about to pass the fifth anniversary of one of the most contemptible episodes in modern British history: the driving from public life of the Batley schoolteacher.