“The Lost Girls”: why it’s a load of old rubbish
The lost girls: Illegal abortion widely used by some UK ethnic groups to avoid daughters 'has reduced female population by between 1,500 and 4,700' – Science – News – The Independent I saw this...
Author: Matthew Smith
‘Wahhabis’ are not the only fanatics in Pakistan
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...
Claire Dyer belongs with her family
Update 23rd January: the tribunal has been adjourned with no decision made; this is because more evidence is needed from the health board. Claire therefore remains under section and the threat of transfer to...
Why Muslims don’t join the Christian Right
The new intolerance: will we regret pushing Christians out of public life?: A Challenge to the Left Cristina Odone's headline article in this week's New Statesman describes how a liberal consensus has taken hold...
Don’t believe the “wearable tech” hype
SwiftKey: Top 10 tech predictions for the future Last week SwiftKey (or rather TouchType Ltd), the company behind a sophisticated predictive keypad for Android devices (which I used for several years before switching to...
Taj Hargey is wrong: there is no ‘British Islam’
Yesterday (Boxing Day), there was a letter in the Guardian from Taj Hargey, the self-appointed leader of the so-called Muslim Education Centre of Oxford and a regular go-to figure for media wanting someone to...
Not the ‘ally’ Muslims need
In today’s Guardian, there’s an article by Laurie Penny attacking those who have been campaigning against the supposed gender segregation on British university campuses (meaning, the separate seating arrangements at some Islamic society gatherings),...
Woolwich murder was perverse, not merely extreme
Last Thursday, the two men who murdered the soldier Lee Rigby in the street outside an army barracks in Woolwich and then paraded on camera with bloodied hands and a meat cleaver, were found...
The danger of knee-jerk closures of NHS units
A couple of weeks ago, a Care Quality Commission report was published that revealed that two NHS units for people with learning disabilities on the same site in Oxford were dreadful — they failed...
More on “segregation” pseudo-controversy
Following my entry on the fake controversy over "segregation" (i.e. separate seating for men and women) at Islamic society events in London, Channel 4 News covered the issue this evening, featuring interviews with Maryam...
Separate seating is not segregation
The last couple of years various groups have stirred up a controversy out of nowhere about the tendency of some Muslim groups to separate men and women at lectures on university campuses. This has...
What’s so great about TomTom?
Last week I bought a new sat-nav, a TomTom Pro 5150 Truck Live, which is a specialist one for truck drivers which has information about vehicle size limits and truck speed limits (normal sat-navs...
Mehdi Hasan’s phoney apologetics
British Muslims should stand up and say it: there is nothing Islamic about child marriage (at the New Statesman and also the Huffington Post) Mehdi Hasan argues that it is British Muslims' responsibility to...
Renewed harassment of McDougalls is indefensible
On Sunday I read, via Sarah Ismail, that the McDougall family (Mark and Kerry McDougall, née Robertson, and their sons Ben and Lochlan) have faced renewed “investigation” since they have returned to Dunfermline, their...
Maajid Nawaz plays to groundless fears over niqaab
Why I, as a Muslim, believe the veil must be barred in our schools: A provocative view from Islamic thinker fighting for Glenda Jackson's seat Maajid Nawaz, the former member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir who was...
CyanogenMod and ungrateful users
Recently, as I posted here last week, I upgraded my main phone (a Nexus 4) to run CyanogenMod 10.2 which is based on Android 4.3 — they are starting work on the next version...
Taking care of business
The last few weeks I’ve not been blogging as much as I used to, and there’s one important reason for this: I’ve been working on getting my HGV (truck) licence. You have to do...
CyanogenMod 10.2 and the Nexus 4
I bought a Nexus 4 a couple of months ago when it was reduced to clear, having previously been using a Galaxy Nexus which ran CyanogenMod 10.1, which was based on Android 4.2. This...
A fortnight of upgrades
The past couple of weeks, I've upgraded the operating systems on all three of the computers I own (not including my mobile phone and tablet). I've a Mac, a desktop PC and a laptop...
Obama urged to show more clemency than we do
Barack Obama urged to show clemency to Briton deported from US | World news | The Guardian Philip Hartley-Wall is a 42-year-old man born in the UK whose family moved him to the USA...