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
Hot on the heels of the Tower Hamlets Muslim foster care hoax, the Times today printed a story (behind firewall) claiming that home schooling was part of “a breeding ground for extremists and future terrorists”, a claim made by Metropolitan … Continue reading
Earlier today I heard an interview with Sir Martin Narey, a former director-general of the prisons service and later chief executive of the Natoinal Offender Management Service, then CEO of Barnardo’s and more recently an advisor to Michael Gove on … Continue reading
Earlier today I saw an article on Medium titled “Why did Andrew Norfolk lie?”. Andrew Norfolk is the investigative reporter who wrote the story about the “Christian” girl being fostered with the Muslim foster family in east London that appeared … Continue reading
The truth about the young girl fostered with a Muslim family in east London that appeared in the Times on Monday was revealed yesterday in an anonymised court judgement (PDF). The Times’ story was rubbish, based wholly on spurious claims … Continue reading
The Murdoch Times has a front-page story today exposing a ‘scandal’ in which a young “white, Christian” girl was placed by Tower Hamlets council’s social services into the care of a Muslim foster family in which the wife wears the … Continue reading
Today, social media has been abuzz about a column by Kevin Myers, about whom I last wrote on this blog in 2009 in response to a column full of stock false Islamophobic assertions by him in the Irish Independent (free … 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
This shouldn’t need to be said, but … In the wake of the fire in the Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey public housing block in west London, in which at least six people have died (the number is expected to rise … 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
Readers of a certain age will remember the character of Barry Kent from Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series of books about a young man growing up in the Midlands (of England) in the 1980s and his progression through adult life. … Continue reading
There is an article in the Times today (paywalled) in which Melanie Phillips proclaims that the Scots and Northern Irish have no right to secede at the expense of the “authentic”, “ancient” British nation and that Brexit “expresses the desire … Continue reading
Last Sunday some of the tabloids led with a story about Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East, paying male prostitutes, asking them to bring ‘poppers’ and offering to cover the cost of cocaine. As a result of this … 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
This morning I was listening to Vanessa Feltz’s phone-in show in London which is every weekday from 9am to noon. I tuned in just before 10am at which point I was heading out on the M3 towards Andover, and they … Continue reading
There are some themes which will be familiar to anyone who follows or is involved in feminist discourses about rape and other violence against women and children: that the perpetrators often go unnamed while victims are blamed; that the crimes … Continue reading
Earlier this week Jeremy Corbyn (right) gave his support to considering reintroducing women-only carriages on trains, which were found in the UK until the 1970s and still in a number of other countries, particularly Japan. He actually did not come … Continue reading
‘If you hate the migrants in Calais, you hate yourself’ | Nick Cohen (in today’s Observer) People have been sharing this feature by Nick Cohen since it first appeared online yesterday (and I had a hard job getting to it … Continue reading
Yesterday a light aircraft crashed when attempting to land at Blackbushe airfield near Farnborough. The airfield is a former RAF base which has also been a passenger airport, but these days is used for executive jets and for pilots’ training. … Continue reading