February 2006, speaking at the "Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam", Murray said that the "crisis in Islamic-Western relations" lay in: He continued: After Murray refused Paul Goodman's offer to disown these comments, the Conservative Party frontbench severed formal relations with Murray and his Centre for Social Cohesion. In 2010, Murray argued against the motion in an Intelligence Squared US debate titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?" Murray has described Islamophobia as a "nonsense term" and in 2013 argued "a phobia is something of which one is irrationally afraid. Yet it is supremely rational to be scared of elements of Islam and of its fundamentalist strains in particular. Nevertheless, the term has been very successfully deployed, not least because it has the aura of a smear. Islamophobes are not only subject to an irrational and unnecessary fear; they are assumed to be motivated (because most Muslims in the West are from an ethnic minority) by "racism". Who would not recoil from such charges?" In 2009, Murray was prevented from chairing a debate at the London School of Economics between Alan Sked and Hamza Tzortzis on the topic "Islam or Liberalism: Which is the Way Forward?", with the university citing security concerns following a week-long student protest against Israel's attacks on Gaza. The debate took place without Murray chairing. The move was criticised by the conservative press, such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. In June 2009, Murray accepted an invitation to a debate with Anjem Choudary, leader of the banned group Al-Muhajiroun, on the subject of Sharia law and British law at Conway Hall. Members of Al-Muhajiroun acting as security guards tried to segregate men and women at the entrance of the event. Clashes broke out near the entrance between Choudary's and Murray's supporters and Conway Hall cancelled the debate because of the attempted forced separation of men and women. Outside the building, a confrontation between Choudary and Murray over the cancellation of the event occurred. Murray's Centre for Social Cohesion later published a study arguing that one in seven Islam-related terrorist cases in the UK could be linked to Al-Muhajiroun. Murray has argued in defence of Muslim reformers in his writing. In 2021, he criticised Islamists who celebrated and supported the demise of the counter-extremism Quilliam Foundation thinktank in Britain, claiming "Some of this country's best citizens, who happened also to be Muslims, gave Islamic