So, it was all a lie
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...
Category: Islamophobia
Muslim foster story is naked hate
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...
We all knew Kevin Myers was a bigot
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...
In defence of the friends of Nabra Hassanen
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...
Grenfell Tower fire: not terrorism
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...
On hijab, ‘neutrality’ and threat
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,...
The alt-right’s Barry Kent
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...
Melanie Phillips has her history wrong
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...
Modi should have been Keith Vaz’s undoing
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...
Listen to women — but which women?
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...
Let’s be clear: the French swimsuit ban is about hate
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...
Muslim women don’t owe solidarity to bigots
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...
Name the problem: White Bigotry
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...
Jeremy Corbyn, ‘Islamists’ and women-only carriages
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...
Yes, we do get rid of ‘hate preachers’
‘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...
There’s more to the Binladins than OBL
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...
Time to bring the air industry down to earth
Yesterday a story started circulating on social media in which an American female Muslim chaplain named Tahera Ahmad, who was travelling on a United Airlines flight (run by a partner, Shuttle America), asked for...
Why can’t a leading Muslim cop tell Islam from ISIS?
Today the Guardian published an interview with Britain's "most senior Muslim police officer", Scotland Yard commander Mak Chishty, head of community engagement for the Metropolitan police, in which he claimed that earlier and more...
No rape culture except Muslim rape culture?
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, author of the book Love in a Headscarf, earlier posted a link to a ridiculous article by one Liam Deacon (whose other writings are at the Huffington Post) which was briefly...
No, not “regrettable errors”. Lies. #FoxNewsFacts
Fox Correction: "We Have Made Some Regrettable Errors On-Air Regarding The Muslim Population In Europe" | Video | Media Matters for America Fox News, on which a number of ludicrous and obviously false claims...