Abridged from The Cutting Edge

As a participant in the BBC Newsnight special, 'Iraq - 10 Years On', I found myself feeling slightly miffed at the lack of real debate on the crucial issues.

Newsnight presented some deeply questionable narratives of the war and its aftermath...

The UK government's decision to resume fracking has been welcomed by the oil industry, and widely lambasted by environmental campaigners. But to a large extent the debate about the potential of shale gas in this country has completely missed the point.

While Prime Minister David Cameron this week...

When pundits and editors and politicians over the next few days and weeks insist that Leveson's recommendations should be ignored because they endanger the sacred principle of freedom of the press, ask yourself one simple question.

Whose payroll are they on?

Invariably, they are either on...

The debate about Abu Qatada's untimely release from prison boils down to two, simplistic, polarised narratives. On the one hand, we have a pro-civil liberties, human rights perspective which lauds the government's inability to deport Qatada back to Jordan where he faces the prospect of torture and possibly death. On...

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five British terror suspects, the most notorious of which is the self-styled ex-Finsbury Park mosque cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, can be extradited to the United States to be tried on terrorism charges.

While the usual cheerleaders and...

In Channel 4's Islam: the Untold Story, aired 28 August, British writer Tom Holland - garbed Indiana Jones-style in billowing shirt and trusty hat - treks across the Arabian desert, talking to local Bedouins, and inspecting historical artefacts to investigate the origins of Islam. Muhammed, he concludes, probably never came...

Ever since 'Black Hawk Down', Somalia is not known as a country bearing good news. For over 20 years, the country has lacked a stable central government and been wracked by civil war.

But for the first time, it looks as if this grim state of affairs might change....

Over a decade after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - and seven years after the London bombings - questions about Islam, Muslims and their place in the wider Western world continue to foment strong debate. One only needs to look at Mehdi Hasan's recent observations on the...