Sunday 13 September 2015 – By Charles Moore

Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary. It is through his country that very large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and the Balkans now pass. At the beginning of this month, Mr Orbán said: “I think we have a right to decide that we don’t want to have a large number of Muslim people in our country.”

Mr Orbán was fiercely attacked for the motives behind his remark. I do not know enough about Hungarian politics to say whether such attacks are justified. But, regardless of the precise facts about Mr Orbán, I would guess most people in western – let alone eastern – Europe would quietly agree with his general proposition. One of the biggest anxieties about the current immigration is its high Muslim element. Is it wrong to have such an anxiety, let alone to express it publicly, let alone to want to have a system of immigration based on it?

I don’t find these easy questions to answer. Nearly 25 years ago, I wrote an article for which many people, including some I respected, criticised me. In it, I argued that difference of religion often made immigration more difficult, and that this was particularly so in the case of Islam. The piece was written not long after the first Gulf war. I mentioned our Muslim next-door neighbours (we then lived in London). I wrote that they seemed nice people, but that when, during the war, I could hear them praying through the wall, I felt uneasy.

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