The other day Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, a popular Muslimah poet and blogger, drew my attention to an advertisement she’d seen in a mosque in Birmingham. It was from a BBC radio producer looking for “an older, Muslim woman who feels deeply … Continue reading
Outcry over sexualised hijab schoolgirl (from The Australian) Honi soit qui mal y pense is a Norman French phrase, meaning “shame on he who thinks ill of it”. It appears on the British royal garter, which is the emblem of … Continue reading
Earlier a Facebook friend (an African-American Muslim woman) posted a status that Black Muslim men should just accept that most Black Muslim women hate polygamy and that “no amount of guilting and shaming is going to change that”. This provoked … Continue reading
Early last Sunday morning in a northern Virginia town, a young lady was kidnapped off the street during or after the taraweeh prayer (the night-time prayers held during Ramadan) having gone to get food to eat before beginning her daily … Continue reading
Last week I heard a conversation between Shelina Janmohammed, the author of Love in a Headscarf and Generation M and a columnist for The National, a Dubai-based newspaper, and the LBC presenter Sheila Fogerty, about hijab and others’ attitudes to … Continue reading
Last week there was outrage after a man was manhandled off a United Airlines plane in Chicago, having boarded and taken the seat he had paid for, when the airline decided that their crew needed his seat more than he, … Continue reading
Last Monday was apparently FGM Awareness Day, and that means there were a lot of FGM stories in the media with vain attempts to interpret figures in a new way to make a story out of them despite their lack … Continue reading
Last Friday the highest court in France, the Council of State (Conseil d’État), struck down the ban on full-body swimsuits or so-called burkinis which had been imposed by some 30 municipalities in southern France on various pretexts such as morality, … Continue reading
In the past couple of weeks several coastal regions of France, including the districts that include Cannes, Nice and Menton, have banned women from wearing the full-body swimsuits known as ‘burkinis’ that are popular with Muslim women on their beaches. … Continue reading
ThinkProgress, a site some of us had taken for a progressive opinion site, recently published a piece titled “Why Converts To Islam Are So Susceptible To Becoming Terrorists”, by one Beenish Ahmed (right). That this is true was news to … Continue reading
The other day Tell MAMA, which monitors hate crimes against Muslims, published an anonymous article claiming that certain unnamed “moral guardians of the Internet”, mainly aged between 20 and 35 “who spend their time on Twitter railing against prejudice and … Continue reading
The crusade against FGM is out of control - Spectator Blogs Brendan O’Neill wrote the above article on the incident reported recently in the British press, in which Baroness Jenny Tonge took a flight to Addis Ababa that was full … Continue reading
France ‘to protect all religions’ (BBC News) The French president, François Hollande, has announced that France “will protect all religions” and that Muslims are the “main victims of fanaticism” in a speech at the Arab World Institute: Speaking at the … Continue reading
Back in the 1980s, Doctor Who featured a storyline in which The Doctor was transported to a land ruled by so-called happy people, a land in which sadness is illegal and punished by the Happiness Patrol, who have the TARDIS … Continue reading
The Thursday before last was apparently “Zero Tolerance of FGM day”, accompanied by widespread media coverage of various campaigns against it, a petition which apparently gained two signatures per second, interviews with anti-FGM campaigners and various editorials, particularly in the … Continue reading
Earlier this week, there was a so-called Day of Acceptance (of Disability), organised by a company called 3E Love, which markets a variety of merchandise, like T-shirts, stickers etc, bearing their logo of a wheelchair with a heart-shaped ‘wheel’. Some … Continue reading
The new intolerance: will we regret pushing Christians out of public life?: A Challenge to the Left Cristina Odone’s headline article in this week’s New Statesman describes how a liberal consensus has taken hold which does not brook dissent: where … Continue reading
In today’s Guardian, there’s an article by Laurie Penny attacking those who have been campaigning against the supposed gender segregation on British university campuses (meaning, the separate seating arrangements at some Islamic society gatherings), claiming that they are mostly white … Continue reading
Following my entry on the fake controversy over “segregation” (i.e. separate seating for men and women) at Islamic society events in London, Channel 4 News covered the issue this evening, featuring interviews with Maryam Namazie, who they called a “human … Continue reading
Sarah Sands: We cannot lose the battle for liberal values - Comment - London Evening Standard Sarah Sands is the editor of the London Evening Standard, and this article by her appeared in yesterday’s edition. She has previously been deputy … Continue reading