Monthly Archive: September 2005

Expelled union official reinstated

Via Islamophobia Watch, Keith Shilson, who was expelled from Middlesex University (in London) for insisting on holding a “question time” with Hizbut-Tahrir on campus, has been reinstated, although HT remains banned on the campus....

New Labour’s Stalinist attitudes

OK … those of us who opposed the Iraq war are used to having mud thrown at us: pro-Saddam, unholy alliance, SWP front group, and so on. Now, look which party proposes security laws...

Pictures from the demo

OK … as promised, I’ve finally prepared, scaled and uploaded a few of the pictures I took at the demonstration last Saturday. I took a total of 220 photos, some of which are not...

The rape-as-jihad myth

Some folk reading this are going to start asking why I mention people like Robert Spencer so much on my blog. Well, if Spencer was some guy howling on the sidelines, like so many...

Faith schools: Ulster card played yet again

In the edition of the New Statesman before last (19th Sept 2005), Nick Cohen had an article published in which he questioned the religion and religiosity figures in the 2001 census and called for...

Palazzi reveals his disbelief

Massimo “Abdul-Hadi” Palazzi hasn’t been heard from much lately in the sections of the Internet I inhabit – a couple of years ago one of his minions was a persistent presence on one of...

Another anti-war demo

So, another anti-war demonstration is over. I attended today's event more to cover it than to take part in it, because I'm becoming rather cynical about the whole situation. I always thought the war...

Accessibility features for next version of Qt

My main programming interest is Qt, which is a programming toolkit which allows the same program to be deployed on the Mac, Windows, and X-Window systems such as exist on Linux and Solaris. One...

Bad names, bad kids

This is something I’d never have thought of myself, but having read it, I sort of wonder why I never thought of it. The BBC reports that teachers think they can tell which kids...

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on arbitration

While we’re on the subject of people who pretend to be Muslims and presume their opinions on Muslims and Islam count, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has her take on the Ontario arbitration affair printed in today’s...

Butt out, Salman

While it’s still Wednesday, I thought I might point out an article in today’s Guardian, in which Giles Fraser advises Salman Rushdie to quit his “crusading” (wrong word, but still …) and concentrate on...

It’s a bit flat

An interesting follow-up to the story of Qibla Cola’s failure can be found here in today’s Guardian “g2” supplement (third story down), which gives another angle on why the product failed, rather than the...

Ich bin kein Berliner (2)

Looking at today’s Saturday-edition Guardian, it’s becoming clear that the Independent isn’t the sinking ship some bloggers might have thought. Can anyone who’s read today’s edition confirm or deny my impression that the articles...

Qibla Cola goes down

Some sad news I got off DeenPort this morning is that Qibla Cola, a Muslim competitor to the major cola brands, has gone into receivership. According to this BBC report, the two-year-old company blamed...

Ich bin kein Berliner!

Sorry if I’ve mangled my German, but yesterday the Guardian, a generally left-leaning British former broadsheet, relaunched itself with a “Berliner” format – the size used by Le Monde, slightly wider and quite a...

Petrol panic

Today I was back driving vans, delivering fixtures and fittings for an Asian food company from south London up to town for an exhibition. There’s a shortage of petrol stations on the main road,...

Spencer applauds Ontario arbitration axe

Latest in Spencer’s “Canadian Shari’ah Watch” (and here‘s a local Muslimah’s opinion): A hard-won victory for human rights. It is only unfortunate that the other religious arbitration arrangements have to be sacrificed, which feeds...

BNP turns to Slovaks for printing

A few months ago I blogged here about how a publishing company owned by a Saudi prince was printing the BNP’s monthly paper, Voice of Freedom. It now appears that the organisation has turned...