Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Last night, BBC1 broadcast a Panorama programme presented by John Ware, purporting to expose “extremism” being promoted through private Islamic schools in the UK, both full-time schools and Saudi-run weekend ones. He starts off...
I read today that the government are proposing new legislation that would bring in supposedly new restrictions on people who are on Jobseeker’s Allowance, in which people who refuse work or “community service” will...
Earlier today I took part in a Facebook discussion about “apologies”, in the context of the British government’s decision to prohibit blood donations from people who had, or ever had, M.E., in which someone...
Welcome to my dream school | Education | The Guardian This article appeared in the Guardian last Friday, but only now I’ve got round to commenting on it. I read it eagerly and think...
Last week, Richard Dawkins delivered a polemic on the British digital TV channel, More 4, against the principle of government support for faith schools. (It is available for viewing at 4 On Demand, although...
Yesterday the Daily Star (the Black Hole to you and me), a London tabloid from the same pig-sty as the Daily Express (AKA Daily Spew), ran a story about the “scandal” of the borough...
I was just listening to the BBC London station (94.9FM) and the top story in their news bulletins at the moment seems to be the fact that some Muslim parents are withdrawing their children...
This morning, I heard an interview with the woman who had stood to be mayor of Newham, the east London borough, in the most recent local elections (the same day as the general election)....
Last week a number of newspapers reported that scientists were “on track to establish the genetic triggers for autism, paving the way for earlier diagnosis of children who could be at risk of developing...
Recently I read two blog posts ([1], [2]) about dealing with old “friends” that pop up on Facebook, and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard of it being a problem. There seems to...
Last Thursday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Report programme in which they attempted to “investigate” the links between British university Islamic societies (or ISocs) with terrorism, on the basis that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalib, who...
Today, the British Supreme Court ruled that the policy of the Jews’ Free School (or JFS) of taking converts to Judaism only when they had been through one denomination’s conversion ritual rather than another...
Why Conservatives failed the test on Islamic schools - Education News, Education - The Independent It appears that the Tories overlooked a number of things while criticising state funding for two schools supposedly linked...
Most UK crime caused by people with childhood behavioural problems, study says | Society | The Guardian I was quite worried when I saw this headline, and was reassured to read on and find...
School teacher Helen Goddard jailed for 15 months for lesbian affair with teenage pupil | Mail Online A judge yesterday jailed a (now former) music teacher for fifteen months for carrying on a lesbian...
Comprehensive defends new school uniform costing nearly £100 | Education | The Guardian On the subject of Portsmouth, one imagines that you will not find much overlap between the riders on the new London-to-Portsmouth...
I’ve not long finished watching a BBC Storyville documentary (see it on iPlayer here) on the scientist D. Carleton Gajdusek (pronounced Guy-du-shek), who won a Nobel prize for work on prion diseases (such as...
Why are the authorities refusing to fund France’s oldest Muslim school, now facing bankruptcy? | Education | The Guardian Today’s Guardian Education supplement on how bigots in a north Paris education authority are using...
Editor-At-Large: Our bitching and bullying is a form of class warfare - Janet Street-Porter, Commentators - The Independent Yesterday, this article by Janet Street-Porter on the depressing saga of the boy who represented the...
Yesterday, while Barack Obama was discussing how to save the world economy with Gordon Brown, Berlusconi et al, Michelle Obama put in a planned, but mostly unannounced, visit to a girls’ school in Islington,...