Mohammed — in pictures

The Spectator
The Koran has no injunction against depicting Mohammed. In fact, within Islam, there’s a rich tradition of painting the Prophet "

Whatever the heritage of their medieval past, Sunni Islam — in the Arab-speaking Middle East — had decisively turned its back on depictions of the Prophet well before the 18th-century emergence of Wahhabism. Once again there are no definite answers. It may have been a gut reaction to the magnificent art produced by their Iranian Shiite rivals but it also reflects a very real fear that Mohammed was slowly being turned into a demi-god and that in the process his actual prophetic message would be ignored. This was especially true in the far eastern frontiers of Islam, such as India and Indonesia (numerically the two largest Muslim nations in the world) with their ancient syncretic traditions. So the attack on imagery can also be seen to have a constructive element embedded within it, concentrating all attention on the text of the Koran and reinforcing the Arab nature of that revelation. "

Cheap central bank cash won't save the euro

Telegraph
QE will solve the eurozone crisis: For most part, this is a case of “let’s do something” amid political stalemate – rather than a remedy for any of the eurozone’s fundamental problem such as lagging competitiveness, unemployment and political backlashes. Cheap central bank cash cannot paper over deep economic and political cracks "

ECB unleashes €60bn-a-month quantitative easing package - live

Telegraph

Krone's euro peg comes under pressure as all eyes are on Frankfurt where the ECB looks ready to pull the trigger on bond-purchases. Follow the latest here  "

 

The euro has tanked:

13.40 BREAKING: ECB announces €60bn a month purchases to be conducted until the end of 2016.

Grace gives us the bad news on Obamacare and our friends at the IRS

Junk Science
By Grace-Marie Turner
Forbes
Millions of Americans who received subsidized health insurance under ObamaCare will find a new wave of frustration this tax season.
After losing their health insurance because it was not ObamaCare compliant…after slogging through the healthcare.gov website to get enrolled in a new policy…after losing their doctors…after learning that they must pay thousands of dollars in deductibles before they can get medical care…now they must face the IRS. ...."

It is time Britain stopped being such a soft touch !

Daily Mail

It has been revealed that the wife of the Al Qaeda fanatic believed to have mentored the terrorists involved in last week’s Paris massacre is living on benefits in a council house in Leicester.

Djamel Beghal, currently awaiting trial in France, was once one of Captain Hook’s chief cronies at Finsbury Park. His wife, Sylvie, who has four children, decided to move to Britain from France because she wanted to live in a more ‘Islamic environment’. Tells you all you need to know, really, doesn’t it? Most people in search of an ‘Islamic environment’ would look first to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Not Sylvie. She chose Leicester, where she was welcomed with open arms and showered with money courtesy of the mug British taxpayer."