Indigo Jo Blogs

Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective

Author: Matthew Smith

Reviews / War in Iraq & Afghanistan

Nick Cohen: crude parodies and a thinly veiled agenda

There are two extracts from Nick Cohen’s forthcoming book What’s Left? published in last Sunday’s Observer, in which he has a weekly column. For anyone who is not familiar with his writing, he is part of the same tendency as Paul Berman (of Dissent magazine and the author of Terror and Liberalism) and Christopher Hitchens; that is to say, he is from a left-liberal background but supports recent western military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and accuses the left generally of betraying its principles in its opposition to them. Until the early 2000s his columns had a strong pro-civil liberties stance and concern for asylum seekers; after the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, he denounced the Stop the War coalition of being an alliance of the “enemies of economic freedom” (the Socialist Workers) and the “enemies of sexual freedom” (the Muslim Association).

Admin / Tech

Spammers: why the scumbags do it

Getting the blog spammers to hang up their affiliations (Guardian Unlimited Technology) An article from today’s Guardian Technology supplement, about the intricacies (as they seem to me) of affiliate schemes and how they help...

Community

How racist is Britain?

How racist is Britain? Julian Baggini on why he doesn’t believe most white Britons are racists – even though he heard racist language almost everywhere he went (from today’s Guardian) This was in the...

Education

The social engineering of integration

Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, today called for schools with an overwhelmingly Muslim pupil intake to be closed down and replaced with large academies serving a mixed community. In an interview with the Financial Times (apparently not online, but there’s a synopsis here), he claimed that the present situation of there being schools with an overwhelmingly Muslim intake and pupils who speak a foreign language, like Bangla, at home, “it has become a real strategic security problem”. “They would be much more likely to collaborate with the police and tell them people within their own community are doing things they shouldn’t be doing if they were better integrated,” he alleged.

Misbah case

More on Misbah Rana

Further to Wednesday's post on Misbah Rana, there is a well-balanced article on the Guardian comment site today, acknowledging that the recent custody decision on Misbah Rana is "the best, or the least bad,...

Media

BBC feature on Misbah Rana

BBC Radio 4 – From Molly to Misbah This is a BBC radio programme which was on Radio 4 this afternoon (I’ve not listened to it yet) featuring Misbah Rana, the girl also known...

Media

Such anger over the antics of idiots

I don’t know why I was surprised by the spectacle of protests in India, complete with effigy burnings, against the racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood actress, on the notorious Channel 4 programme Big Brother, two nights ago. I did not see the actual episode as (until last night) I didn’t watch this wretched, trashy, clapped-out programme. However, I did hear the discussion of the episode on yesterday morning’s Vanessa Feltz show, and most of it was not sympathetic to the three women responsible.

Interfaith / Media

Reflections on “Undercover Mosque”

Having seen Channel 4's documentary Undercover Mosque, which was shown earlier this evening (see earlier entry), I am now more reassured regarding the material quoted from the preachers they showed; however, the programme-makers repeatedly...

Community / Media

The Wahhabis are our problem, not yours

On Wednesday evening the Evening Standard ran an “exposé” on the central mosque in London, alleging that its bookshop was run by Wahhabis and that the mosque is run by Saudi Arabia. The specific accusation is that the bookshop sells DVDs by Khalid Yasin and one Shaikh Feiz which contains content the average white Briton might find offensive, among them that women are deficient in intelligence compared to men, that Jews are comparable to pigs and that Christian missionaries deliberately spread AIDS in Africa under the cover of vaccines for common dangerous diseases.

News

“The point” about gays and discrimination

Right now, as I write this, the British House of Lords (for non-Brits, that’s an unelected upper house which can only suggest amendments and delay laws, not actually block them, although it could in...

Education

In praise of hypocrisy

This morning the Daily Mirror reported that the former Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, had sent her dyslexic son to a special private school because she felt that the provision in her area, Tower Hamlets...

Arts

Joe Queenan: the recurring white hope

From Friday's Guardian film/music review section, Joe Queenan on a recurring theme in Hollywood films prominently featuring Africa or black people generally: that "no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely...

Secularism

Secular fundamentalists “the new totalitarians”

Tobias Jones (of The Dark Heart of Italy fame) on militant atheists who behave like totalitarians, hiding among anti-sexists, anti-homophobes and anti-racists, but in reality seeking to erase religion totally from the Earth, starting...

Media

Another false exposé by right-wing bloggers

Comment is free: Victim of the bloggers Brian Whitaker of how "patriotic" right-wing American bloggers saw a conspiracy where there was none, alleging that an Iraqi police captain, Jamil Hussain, was someone the Associated...

Politics / Windbags

Is Ken really the man for this job?

In a couple of weeks' time there will be a conference in London, "A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations", featuring a long list of speakers including Ken Livingstone (the mayor of London),...