BBC on Islamism

Andrew Marr's Start the Week covers some interesting territory this morning - the first three might be of most interest:

"The novelist MARTIN AMIS has been the focus of much controversy over his journalism in the aftermath of 9/11. He is not, he declares, Islamophobic, but is instead "Islamismophobic" or anti-Islamist. He explains his views and argues that Western liberals have given in to ‘moral equivalence’ on the issue of terrorism. The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007, a collection of essays and short stories, is published by Jonathan Cape.

In the year that marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the lawyer, campaigner and UN Special Rapporteur, ASMA JAHANGIR, warns of the attacks on these rights by nations using the pretext of the 'war against terror.' Recently released from house arrest in Pakistan, she argues that targeting Muslims in anti-terrorism measures is counter-productive and that intolerance cannot be wiped out by intolerant behaviour by governments. Asma Jahangir will be giving an Oxford Amnesty Lecture on Wednesday 30 January and a talk on the subject of human rights at the University of York on Thursday 31 January.

While Europe was stagnating in the Dark Ages, Arabic science experienced a remarkable golden age, particularly during the reign of the Abbasids of Baghdad between the 8th and 11th centuries AD. Physicist JIM AL-KHALILI tells the story of Baghdad’s ‘House of Wisdom’ and the scientific geniuses the academy spawned, who took the philosophy and science of the ancient Greeks and turned it into modern scientific method 800 years before the dawn of the European Renaissance. Professor Jim Al-Khalili is delivering the Michael Faraday Prize Lecture on The House of Wisdom and the Legacy of Arabic Science at the Royal Society on Wednesday 30 January.

400 years after he was born, John Milton would be horrified that we still have a monarchy and a government with arbitrary powers to declare war. Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, QUENTIN SKINNER, re-examines Milton’s theories of human freedom that mark his lesser known republican prose as well as his major poetry. Quentin Skinner is delivering a lecture, John Milton as a Theorist of Liberty, at Christ’s College, Cambridge on Wednesday 30 January. It is part of a series of lectures at Christ’s to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Milton on 9 December 1608."