On Muslims, Christmas and other holidays
The other day someone posted an image to Facebook of two Christmas displays accompanied by a slogan to the effect that Muslims aren’t banning Christmas — this is how they do it in Malaysia...
Category: Islam
On the “Muslim Luther” fallacy that won’t die
Last night on BBC’s Newsnight, there was a two-minute slot by a Canadian journalist called Graeme Wood, who claimed that the rise of the “Islamic State” was equivalent to the Christian Reformation spearheaded by...
Review: Britain’s ISIS Supporters
ISIS: The British Women Supporters Unveiled from Channel 4 (available for 26 days as of this writing) On Monday night Channel 4 broadcast what purported to be an investigation into a group of British...
How France can really ‘protect all religions’
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...
A rail geography lesson for jihadis and journos
Over the years I’ve noticed that a standard tactic of the dishonest journalist or columnist in the age of the Internet is to rely on the geographical ignorance of your overseas audience, most of...
Who’s helping disabled Muslims this Ramadan?
BBC News - Frederic Kanoute supports disabled man's Ramadan fast Imraan Adam is a Muslim who lives in Derby and has cerebral palsy, and earlier this week it was reported that the council in...
Christmas, converts and that fatwa
Just before last Christmas, the Egyptian Muslim scholar (currently Grand Mufti of Egypt), Ali Gomaa (or Ali Jumu’ah) replied to a question from someone whose mother had left Islam, as to whether he and...
Good enough for Olympians, good enough for the plebs
BBC News - Lancashire Muslims Halal school dinner boycott call The Lancashire Council of Mosques has advised Muslim parents in the county to boycott the new ‘halaal’ dinners being offered to their children by...
How to blaspheme in Pakistan
How to commit blasphemy in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian This is a fairly comprehensive assessment of the situation surrounding the blasphemy law in Pakistan right now. While I am not against...
Jim Fitzpatrick on halaal meat
There is a letter in this week’s edition of the New Statesman from Jim Fitzpatrick, Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, an east London constituency which includes a very large Muslim population (it is...
Eat halaal! Organic is no substitute
HijabMan » The Labels Halal & Zabihah And Why I Choose Local And Organic Instead The above article explains the author’s decision to prefer locally-produced, organic meat over halaal meat which has been slaughtered...
Babar Ahmad should be freed now
Last night, BBC’s Newsnight interviewed Babar Ahmad, the man wanted for extradition to the USA on the grounds of receiving classified information and assisting mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and Chechnya through his website, Azzam...
Baroness Warsi and Anjem Choudhary: takfir on demand
Lady Warsi: extremists forfeit their right to call themselves Muslim | Politics | The Guardian Baroness (Syeeda) Warsi recently said in an interview with the Guardian that Muslim extremists such as Anjem Choudhary, who...
Blast from the past: the “Islamic” marriage contract
The new Muslim marriage contract will help empower women | Tehmina Kazi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk About three years ago, I wrote a response to a new “Islamic marriage contract” which had...
Review: My Brother, the Islamist
My Brother, the Islamist is a documentary in which a film-maker I had never heard of, named Robb Leach (his home page, incidentally, has no biography or reference to any other work by him),...
Deen Intensive programme for 2011 announced
I’ve been asked to publicise the upcoming Deen Intensive programme, which is to be held at Uludag near Bursa, Turkey, for three weeks starting 30th June. The focus will be on Imam Ghazaali, and...
Disability, punishment and attitude
I got a comment earlier today from WildKat (Kimberley Robbins) in response to a post I’d made in August about the incident in Saudi Arabia in which a man who had been paralysed in...
Yes, the law DOES apply to middle-class White people
This past week or so, there have been two major news stories in the UK about men arrested for saying things on the Internet that made a strong suggestion of violence that may not...
Idiots insult troops and poppy
This image, by Willie Vass shows Celtic fans displaying a slogan insulting the poppy appeal and British troops over the centuries. While British troops have actually done a lot of bad things in Ireland,...
How much can we blame al-Awlaqi?
So, Roshonara Choudhary, the stupid woman who tried to murder the MP, Stephen Timms, has received a 15-to-life sentence. Today, the Guardian (and probably other papers) printed transcripts of her interviews with the police...