At the Los Angeles Film Festival I caught Rory Kennedy’s powerful and moving Last Days in Vietnam. If you think you are familiar with the story of the botched and frantic – and heroic – American evacuation of Vietnam, with the fall of Saigon, including some many tens of thousands of lucky Vietnamese, this film […]
Michele Bachmann and Christian Taqiyya
Much has been made in recent years of the Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya, which permits and even promotes, according to some, religious concealment and dissimulation in certain contexts and in confronting non-Muslims. What is it that Michele Bachmann did on Meet the Press this Sunday but engage in her own form of Taqiyya on behalf of her […]
Tony Blair on Muslim Integration
Many British seem determined to make of Tony Blair what the Russians have of Mikhail Gorbachev – a greatly significant leader better appreciated outside his country than within it. Below, published on his official website, Blair demonstrates the frank and clear-sighted vision missing from so many who are blinded either by baseness or dull orthodoxy. […]
Veiled Threats
I have written several times before on the subject of wearing the burqa or niqab in public. I have argued that A general ban on the veil in public is not defensible in a liberal, democratic society, so I think the recently passed French ban is a mistake. I defend a general right to wear […]
Unveiling a Full Ban on Full Veils
The New York Times reports on French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to introduce a bill in May to ban the wearing of the full veil in public places in France including from streets, markets and shops, according to his spokesman, Luc Chatel. Sarkozy intends the bill, a follow up to the 2004 ban on conspicuous […]