Earlier today I saw a tweet by Shaun King, an American race activist, about Egyptian media coverage and popular interest in American police shootings and resulting protests: I am in Egypt.The murder of Stephon Clark by the Sacramento Police is … Continue reading
I saw this video being tweeted out by the Economist, a London-based weekly news magazine, this morning. It posits the idea that polygamy is strongly linked to violence in a society. Polygamy is still common in Africa, the Islamic world … Continue reading
So, last night the first episode of a three-part series on BBC2, House of Saud: A Family at War was broadcast. I commented on the trailer last night as the language had been troubling me since I first saw it. … Continue reading
I’ve been seeing trailers on BBC TV for a documentary on the changes being forced upon Saudi Arabia by the new crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman (his father, the actual king Salman is believed to have dementia). The show, House … Continue reading
So, today a man detonated a bomb in New York, at the Port Authority bus terminal. The man, a 27-year-old from Bangladesh who lives in Brooklyn and was a cab driver before his licence expired, was injured when the “low-tech” … Continue reading
The persecution of the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar in the main native language) has picked up in the last few weeks, with obvious signs of genocide or as the UN has called it “classic ethnic cleansing”, the burnings of villages … Continue reading
Over the weekend I saw a touching story about an elderly Moroccan lady who completed the first grade of her country’s school system after having been illiterate all her life and having spent three years, in her 80s, studying for … Continue reading
Yesterday I saw a Facebook post which linked to a story about a paper by Craig Considine which claimed that “newly translated” stories from the time of the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) demonstrated that ISIS’s treatment of Christians … Continue reading
Martin Luther King junior famously wrote a Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a response to local White clergymen who had urged him to be less strident and roll back on the direct action. One paragraph sticks out: I must make … Continue reading
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 Martin Luther. There is meant to … Continue reading
The Independent carried a story last Thursday in which Robert Fisk claimed that “for the first time”, Saudi Arabia was under attack from both Sunni and Shi’ite scholars as some two hundred scholars, including the mufti of al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib … Continue reading
I was rather surprised to hear the ongoing war in Yemen being described as the “forgotten war” on BBC’s Newsnight, as I’ve been hearing about it almost non-stop on my social media feeds; but then, I don’t watch the TV … 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
Last week, in a speech to a gathering of security chiefs in Bratislava, Slovakia, David Cameron accused Muslims of pointing the finger at everyone but themselves for some Muslims being attracted to ISIS. The speech, sections of which were briefed … Continue reading
Recently three young girls, British Bangladeshis from east London, left the UK for Turkey apparently intending to join ISIS in Syria, and the media have been up in arms about the fact that someone was able to ‘groom’ these girls … Continue reading
The saints go marching out as the face of Islam hardens in Pakistan | World news | theguardian.com This article is about how traditional, supposedly gentler and mystical, forms of Islam are being edged out in Pakistan by “radical itinerant … Continue reading
The BBC just reported that the trial at the Hague of William Ruto, the Kenyan deputy president, for crimes committed after the 2007 general election, has been suspended so that he can go back and deal with the crisis at … Continue reading
Last Thursday, the British Parliament resoundingly defeated a government motion to join military action in Syria in response to the recent chemical weapon attacks in the suburbs of Damascus. Labour were joined in their opposition by a large number of … Continue reading
Until we learn to be as single-minded as the fanatics - at home and abroad - we’re ALL hostages | Mail Online In response to the attack by an “al-Qa’ida franchise” on the gas installation in south-eastern Algeria, Melanie Phillips … Continue reading
We condemn Israel. So why the silence on Syria? | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian This article appeared in the opinion section of yesterday’s Guardian and criticises the public and the anti-war movement in particular for saying … Continue reading