Photos from the South Downs
Birds in flocks, originally uploaded by Indigo Jo. The other day I had the use of the family car, so I decided to go down to the South Downs, a spectacular range of hills...
Monthly Archive: January 2008
We can’t boycott everyone
Sister Kareema Hamdan, over at UmmahPulse.com, suggests a Muslim boycott of Dutch products in response to Geert Wilders’ planned film insulting the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) or Islam, claiming that a similar...
Muslims in London: Challenge Boris Johnson tonight!
Boris Johnson will be answering questions on the BBC London (94.9FM) drive-time show at 5pm this evening. If it follows the same pattern as Ken Livingstone’s last week, the interview will happen at 6pm....
The rebranding of Abdullah Quilliam
Abdullah Quilliam: Britain’s First Islamist? at Yahya Birt Yahya Birt demolishes the attempt to rebrand Abdullah Quilliam, the pioneer British Muslim of the Victorian era, as some sort of mascot for the pacified “British...
Martin Amis: he even had Muslim girlfriends, you know
The two faces of Amis – Features, Books – The Independent Johann Hari interviews Martin Amis ([1], [2]) for the first time since the controversy over his “adumbrations” to Ginny Dougary. He tells us...
Review of London lecture on French hijab politics
This evening the American feminist academic Joan Wallach Scott, a professor of social science at Princeton, NJ, gave a lecture to promote her book, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2007) (reviewed in the...
Mrs Brown’s Indian dress
Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been attacked in certain sections of the media for wearing Indian dress on a visit to Delhi as part of a visit...
Monbiot on public school damage
Only class war on public schools can rid us of this unhinged ruling class – Guardian Unlimited George Monbiot wrote this article in yesterday's Guardian, outlining the damage that boarding schools, especially boarding prep...
Ken, the shaikh, the hard left and the anti-left left
Tomorrow, a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary hosted and researched by Martin Bright (of “The Great Koran Con Trick” fame) is to be aired, and it reveals Ken’s loyalty to a small far-left sect called Socialist Action, and that he has given well-paid jobs in the Greater London Authority and its spin-off organisations to various members of it; its members have also worked for various other left organisations over the years, according to one of them, Atma Singh, in today’s Sunday Times ([1], [2]). In the run-up to this programme, articles have appeared in the New Statesman (by Bright himself), in the Observer (by Nick Cohen, predictably) and in the Sunday Times alongside Singh’s piece.
My photo’s in the London Schmap guide
I’ve just been informed that a photograph I took in Portobello Road in Notting Hill, west London, has been included in the Schmap London photo guide. You can find the guide here, and the...
Michael Moore’s Sicko: Review
I’m sure Michael Moore needs no introduction to most of my audience: many of us have been painfully aware of his clumsy attacks on the Bush administration since about 2000. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 almost as soon as it opened in London, and was disappointed to see a list of factual errors in the film, which ruined its impact for me (from a conservative source, but the list is well-referenced). Another criticism of his stance, from an Afro-American Muslim woman on a Yahoo list I used to read, was that he was concerned with “disarming minorities” and that anyone of a minority who consented to being disarmed was a fool. This film, however, is about a rather less controversial topic – American medicine, and the stranglehold he claims the insurance industry have on it.
Segregation and apartheid … in the UK?
Recently it's become fashionable for people concerned about the state of our country to talk of something called segregation. Trevor Phillips, in a famous speech in 2005, which touched off the phony debate on...
Sensationalism over early puberty
Girls Hitting Puberty at 3?! « Tariq Nelson Tariq pointed up this article in the London Sun newspaper, but I just saw an ITV programme on the subject, which focussed on girls who are...
Ed Husain on Nazir-Ali’s “no-go” nonsense
Sunday Telegraph:Bishop right to tackle no-go area in our minds Ed Husain (who else?) has given the "Muslim response" to Michael Nazir-Ali's diatribe in last Sunday's Telegraph, alleging that no-go areas have appeared in...
Familicide presented as honour killing
Last (i.e. Thursday) night, and the night before, BBC1 showed a two-part series called Honour Kills, about honour-related murders in the British Asian community (mostly Pakistani, with one Kurdish case). Abu Eesa has already...
Who speaks for Muslims?
muslimmatters.org » Tarek Fatah (and…) Does NOT Represent Me: Muslims 101 for Media Muslim Matters (in this case Amad) on the media’s insistence on relying on fringe figures for details of what is wrong...
Why Rochester is not a no-go area for Michael Nazir-Ali
Michael Nazir-Ali, bishop of Rochester (previously: [1], [2], [3]), has been given another bit of space in the Sunday Telegraph to write an Islamophobic article (also see front-page feature here). This time, he's alleging...
‘Get them Polish out of your house or I’ll burn it down’
Ed Jones on being driven from his Salford home by vandalism, racist abuse and violence – Guardian Unlimited This was a really shocking story which was in the Guardian yesterday. The author, who had...
Not at all funny
BBC NEWS: Cycling fury at beheading ‘joke’ Matthew Parris, Times columnist and former Tory MP, has apologised in his column for making a joke about decapitating cyclists. Among those it offended were the Rhyl...
Bhutto said OBL murdered
This is a link to a YouTube video of Benazir Bhutto alleging that Osama bin Laden was murdered by one Omar Shaikh – presumed to be Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was implicated in...