Syria

Shamima Begum should not be permitted to return to the UK

February 14, 2019
Archbishop Cranmer
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Shamima Begum, a British national, left the UK in 2015 when she was 15 years old to join the forces of the Islamic State. Now she wants to leave Syria and come "back home" because she is tired and pregnant…

Channel migrants: the greatest kindness we can show is to send them straight back to France

January 2, 2019
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The Bishop of Dover the Rt Rev'd Trevor Willmott has called for a kind and compassionate response to the Channel migrants – those from Iran or Iraq who are desperately…

giles fraser david aaronovitch times syria

Giles Fraser goes to Syria, and the Times denounces his ‘moral decay’

April 20, 2018
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Giles Fraser visited Syria last week, and did lots of Giles Frasery things: he shook a few grand hands, chewed big political ears, kissed lots of children, prayed a few…

The Syrian civil war will never be resolved by the UN Security Council or the International Criminal Court

April 17, 2018
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This is a guest post by Carl Jacobs. ____________________ The Syrian civil war has not been kind to the sacred secular institutions of International Liberalism. There are now 400,000 dead…

Why is gassing Syrian children with sarin or chlorine worse than blowing them to smithereens?

April 13, 2018
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The civil war in Syria is just appalling: the chaos and suffering; it's hell on earth. Hundreds of thousand have have been killed over the past seven years, many of…

If the only way of dealing with British Jihadists is to kill them, why can’t we do it here?

October 23, 2017
320 Comments

British Jihadists are enemies of the State, traitors to the Crown, and a present danger to every man, woman and child in the country. Some 850 Britons are estimated to…

Bishop of Liverpool urges Christians to vote Conservative

April 19, 2017
215 Comments

It was a very, very subtle exhortation tweeted by the Rt Rev'd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool. So subtle, in fact, as to be (he would insist) a totally undetectable…

Trump: Brexit will be a great thing; the EU is basically a German racket

January 16, 2017
139 Comments

"You look at the European Union and it’s Germany. Basically a vehicle for Germany," says Donald Trump in Michael Gove's scoop interview for The Times. It comes as a cyclone…

The liberation of Aleppo? Pouring a sea of grey into buckets of black and white

December 13, 2016
359 Comments

Parliament debates the liberation of Aleppo today. Marvellous. That'll sort it all out. Or perhaps MPs won't quite debate the liberation of Aleppo, for Aleppo hasn't actually been liberated from…

Scores of Anglican clergy complain to Home Secretary about Syriac Orthodox bishops banned from visiting UK

December 8, 2016
86 Comments

Following the shocking revelation that the Home Office refused to grant visas to three persecuted bishops from Iraq and Syria (who had simply wanted to attend the consecration of a…

Persecuted Middle East bishops banned from visiting UK

December 4, 2016
206 Comments

Why are suffering Syrian and Iraqi bishops banned from visiting the UK? They only wanted to attend the consecration of the country's first Syriac Orthodox cathedral, dedicated to St Thomas.…

Christian missionaries in Aleppo crucified and beheaded

October 16, 2016
488 Comments

"At several steps on their path to death by beheading and crucifixion last month, 11 indigenous Christian workers near Aleppo, Syria had the option to leave the area and live.…

ISIS is committing genocide, but Tory MPs are whipped into denial

April 20, 2016
96 Comments

The legal definition of genocide is not restricted to genus: it is defined as the intent "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious…

Should Christians vote for Turkey?

March 17, 2016
286 Comments

The most important 'deal' recently agreed by the EU is not the one negotiated by the UK for a bit of welfare tinkering, but the €6bn settlement with Turkey…

Boko Haram burns children alive, but no EU 'open door' to Nigerian refugees

February 2, 2016
82 Comments

Some two thousand miles away in Deir ez-Zur, Syria, Islamists have besieged the city of 120,000 souls. Women are raped in the street, men beheaded on the banks of…

Global persecution of Christians more extreme than ever

January 13, 2016
317 Comments

This week many in the church and a few in the media have their eyes on Justin Welby and the Primates meeting in Canterbury, waiting to see if the…

Marsha Levine – the Cambridge academic who refused to answer Israeli child's question, citing BDS

December 2, 2015
222 Comments

Dr Marsha Levine was a fellow and senior research associate in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University, which "serves as an interdisciplinary hub aiming to provide…

Cameron's desire to bomb ISIS in Syria is moral, but not the solution

November 18, 2015
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‘Cameron ready to bomb Syria’ announces the Telegraph on its front page today. As headlines go it’s not exactly a major revelation. The PM has been keen to intervene…

The Paris attacks are a reminder of our unwillingness to accept uncomfortable truths

November 16, 2015
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Do you remember the story of Rachel Dolezal, the black US civil rights activist, who was outed by her parents earlier this year as actually being white? Five months…

Ukip MEP bashes Archbishop for offering sanctuary to refugees

September 22, 2015
162 Comments

What do you think? There was an archbishop who loved to read The Guardian and watch the BBC. He saw that thousands upon thousands of Christians were suffering throughout…