Donald Trump has rowed back on his threat to strike power plants in Iran if it doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the end of today, saying there would be no such attacks for at least five days because the two countries had begun talks on the “complete and total resolution of hostilities”. Tehran had responded to the US president’s initial 48-hour deadline by threatening to hit energy facilities and vital water desalination plants in the Gulf. Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer service were torched in Golders Green, north London, last night, in what the prime minister called a “deeply shocking anti-Semitic arson attack”. The capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, called the arsonists “cowardly” and urged anyone with information to come forward. The government will build seven new towns in England under plans to kickstart the biggest housebuilding push in half a century. The towns, which are scattered across the country, will provide at least 10,000 new homes, with names under consideration including Elizabethtown, Pankhurst, Attleeton, Athelstan, Seacole and, one assumes, Towny McTownface.

Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, has been criticised for objecting to a recent Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square as an “act of domination”, says Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. But he has a point. There are occasions when public prayer is appropriate: in St Peter’s Square, say, and round the Kaaba in Mecca. In most cases, though, the obvious motivation is to “seek converts” – an urge that, for both Christianity and Islam, has historically been distorted into seeking territory and power. In recent decades this “power urge” has been much stronger among Muslims, and particularly among Islamists. So in a Christian/agnostic country, a large number of Muslims praying in public may well be “showing some desire for domination”.

Sorry, says Fraser Nelson on Substack, but the whole point of an open iftar is for non-Muslims to join Muslims to mark the end of Ramadan – it is an attempt to “demystify the occasion and extend a hand of friendship”. That hand is being scorched, and “cast as that of the would-be oppressor”. Unfortunately, this all fits with the increasingly popular narrative on the right that our Christian civilisation is under attack by “the woke left and the Muslims”. The hypocrisy of these complaints is astonishing. Are Timothy and co also worried about the mechitza, the curtain or partition separating men and women in Orthodox Jewish synagogues? Or the Catholic church’s refusal to ordain women or marry gay couples? What has been heartening is seeing prominent Jews and Christians rally to the defence of the open iftar. As the Anglican Bishop of Willesden noted, religious freedom in Britain means the right to live out your faith “openly, visibly and without fear”.