Douglas Murray (author): Difference between revisions

Douglas Kear Murray, born 16 July 1979,^[1] is a British freelance journalist and political writer from Lewis, Scotland.^[2] Since April 2007^[3] he has been the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion.^[4]

Murray was educated at St Benedict's School in Ealing in west London,^[5] Eton College in Eton, Berkshire, and Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, where he studied English, receiving a 2:2.

At Oxford, aged twenty, he published a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas.^[6] This was followed by the writing of a play, Nightfall, based on Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg's attempts to dissuade Adolf Eichmann from implementing the Final Solution.^[2]

In 2005 he published a defence of neoconservatism, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It and undertook a related promotional tour of the United States. During the course of this tour he gave an interview to the New York Sun in which he outlined his "instinctive" support for Israel and was dubbed a "self-described neoconservative and Zionist" as well as "Britain's only neoconservative."^[7]

In 2007 he assisted in the writing of Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership by Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, Gen. John Shalikashvili, Field Marshal The Lord Inge, Adm. Jacques Lanxade, and Gen. Henk van den Breemen.^[8] Upon publication, The Guardian reported that amongst its recommendations were that, as a last resort, NATO should be prepared to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.^[9]

He has appeared on the BBC's Question Time,^[10] Newsnight,^[11] HardTalk,^[12] Today Programme,^[13] The Big Questions,^[14] BBC Arabic,^[15] and has written for The Guardian,^[16] The Sunday Times^[17] and Standpoint.^[18]

Douglas Murray was the winner of the 2009 Charles Douglas-Home memorial prize for journalism. It was awarded for his essay on the growth of sharia law in Britain.^[19] Founded in memory of the former editor of The Times, previous recipients of the award included V.S. Naipaul, Michael Gove, Matthew D'Ancona, Anne Applebaum and Anthony Daniels.

Having previously been a practising Anglican^[7] Murray explained, in a 2008 article for The Spectator, how studying Islam and the Qur'an had led to the loss of his own faith to the point he had become an atheist.^[20]

"It is grotesque to argue that Europe has failed its Muslims. It has been made repeatedly obvious that it is Islam that has failed Europe" Douglas Murray, The Telegraph (10/03/2010).^[21]

Murray has described what he sees as, “a creed of Islamic fascism – a malignant fundamentalism, woken from the dark ages to assault us here and now”. He believes that “we live…in a thought culture – but it is one in which the thought has gone bad”. He sees the main problem as being cultural relativism^[22] which he has described as, "the primary disease – the AIDS of the West – the disease which has made the opportunist infection of Islam so deadly".^[23]

Murray supported the Fatwa on Terrorism and wrote that it has "the possibility of being respected by a far wider range of people than any of those individual non-scholarly Muslim voices who have also condemned terrorism without caveat." ^[24]

His comments about Islamic extremism in Holland mean that he has to have a police guard when travelling there.^[10]

He has labelled 'Islamophobia' a "nonsense term", as "there are a considerable number of reasons to be fearful of some – though certainly not all – aspects and versions of Islam."^[25]

Murray said that the followers of Anwar al-Awlaki: "will routinely describe Awlaki as a vital and highly respected scholar, [while he] is actually an al-Qaida-affiliate nut case."^[26]

Douglas Murray wrote an article criticising Malcolm Grant, chancellor at University College London, and radicalisation on university campuses after it emerged that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – who attempted to explode a bomb on a flight to Detroit – was formerly president of the UCL Islamic Society. Malcolm Grant denied there was a problem with extremism on campus,^[27] yet the CSC issued a press briefing highlighting the extremists that had spoken at UCL after being invited by its ISOC.^[28]

In June 2009, Douglas Murray was due to debate Anjem Choudary of the extremist group al-Muhajiroun on Sharia law at Conway Hall in London. The event was organised by Global Issues Society, who claimed to be a student organisation.^[29] However the debate was cancelled shortly before the event was due to start, after members of al-Muhajiroun attempted to enforce physical segregation between men and women. The police were eventually called. Murray said that I'm perfectly willing to debate Anjem Choudary and Al Muhajiroun's ideas. His ideas are not difficult. They do not stand up. But it's very clear that this debate is not neutral. This was a segregated event, policed by Al Muhajiroun's guards.^[30]

In March 2009, Douglas Murray and the Centre for Social Cohesion succeeded in barring Ibrahim el-Moussawi, spokesman for Hizbollah, from entering the UK.^[31]

El-Moussawi had been due to lecture government officials and police on political Islam at a course arranged by the School of Oriental and African Studies.^[32]

Murray was highly critical of the prospect that while el-Moussawi was set to be welcomed into the UK, elected Dutch MP Geert Wilders had been barred from entering the country just weeks before.^[33] He subsequently wrote to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith warning that he was planning to instruct his lawyers to issue an international arrest warrant against el-Moussawi if he entered the UK.^[32] The Home Office eventually refused el-Moussawi a visa.

Murray claimed that he was "banned"^{[34][35][36][37][38][39][40]} by the London School of Economics in January 2009. Murray was set to chair a debate titled "Islam and Liberalism: Which is the Way Forward?" between Dr Alan Sked and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis. However the LSE decided that, as it was experiencing student protests and significant unrest on campus in the context of Israeli incursion into Gaza, Murray's presence "might provoke further unrest". He was subsequently asked by the university to stay away from campus in the interests of "public safety", Murray claims. The LSE publicly denied that he had been banned, and stated that he had previously spoken at a number of LSE events, and said that they had at the last minute reinvited him to chair the meeting after they realised how upset he was when he was told he would not chair the meeting. The meeting went ahead anyway and views similar to those held by Murray were expressed.(Reference, Spectator Blog 23 January 2009).Murray admitted that they had reinvited him, but implied that by then he was too upset to proceed. LSE students suggested in blog responses to news stories that Murray had distorted and exaggerated the event out of pique and to get publicity.^[34] Oliver Kamm of The Times said that the LSE's conduct was "cowardly and unconscionable", while Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph called LSE "gutless" and threatened to return the PhD he had earned at the university.^[41] Journalist Melanie Phillips called the decision "another victory for the forces of darkness",^[38]

Under the headline "Anyone know any Irishman jokes?" Murray wrote a column querying a council having "to pay thousands of pounds in compensation" to a union official who had been told an Irish joke by a Conservative councillor, writing "you can reflect on the ramifications for the taxpayer of a society that decides it needs officials to arbitrate on jokes".^[42] The result was that over 70 Irish jokes appeared on the blog.^[43] The Federation of Irish Societies (a British organisation that represents Irish clubs and societies in Britain^[44]) has since lodged a formal complaint about the blog to the Press Complaints Commission.^[45]

• Murray, Douglas. Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas. ISBN 0-340-76771-5.
• Murray, Douglas (2005). Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. ISBN 1-904-86305-1.
• Murray, Douglas (2007). "Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership" (PDF).
• Murray, Douglas; Verwey, Johan Pieter (2008). "Victims of Intimidation: Freedom of Speech within Europe's Muslim Communities". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

• Official Douglas Murray website
• European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism

Template:Persondata