How to blaspheme in Pakistan
How to commit blasphemy in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian This is a fairly comprehensive assessment of the situation surrounding the blasphemy law in Pakistan right now. While I am not against...
Author: Matthew Smith
What’s wrong with the Green Mile?
Last night it was announced that the actor Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for playing John Coffey in the 1999 film The Green Mile, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name,...
Global warming and the circles of denial
Along with the Arctic ice, the rich world’s smugness will melt | George Monbiot (in yesterday’s Guardian) This article appeared in yesterday’s Guardian and it is about the record melting of Arctic ice that...
Review: ITV’s “Don’t Hate Us”
ITV Player: Tonight — Don’t Hate Us Last Thursday ITV broadcast a documentary on the rise in hate crimes against people with disabilities which has occurred since the coalition government came to power and...
Assange, Galloway and low Muslim expectations
Last week there has been a lot of discussion about people’s attitudes to rape with regard mostly to the extradition of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, currently hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in...
The problem with Policy Exchange’s housing sell-off
Yesterday there was a report published by the Tory think-tank Policy Exchange (previously discussed here as a source of reports from spies in mosques) which proposed that councils should be forced to sell off...
Nicklinson ruling was the right one
Tony Nicklinson died on the morning of 22nd August 2012, having contracted pneumonia over the weekend. Last week the British High Court ruled that the courts could not allow doctors to end the life...
Muslims and the care of those with learning disabilities
A few months ago I wrote here about the needs of some converts, particularly those with disabilities, which was reproduced on MuslimMatters a few weeks later, and mentioned the problems with setting up a...
Gold medals won’t cure cancer
As the British team in the London Olympics surpassed its previous gold medal record (its all-time record from 1908 is unbeaten, but that was when the rules were very different from now), politicians started...
Further PACE findings and a biased Australian interview
Yesterday the medical journal PlosOne published findings from the PACE trial, a trial of various treatment options for “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” which was published to great derision from the patient community last year. The...
The Olympics, Ramadan and racism
So, the Olympics has finally started. I had been planning an article last week about the chaos in the preparation for the Games, the security etc., and the traffic disruption that would result from...
‘Problem families’: just take them into care?
Last week, a civil servant called Louise Casey published a report identifying 120,000 “problem families” and proposed an intervention scheme whereby social workers would actually sit in people’s houses and make sure they get...
Ex-soldier facing expulsion over 2010 fight
BBC News – Fijian-born soldier Isimeli Baleiwai fights to stay in UK (also at Channel 4 News) Isimeili Baleiwai served in the British army for 13 years, seeing action in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Iraq...
Online bullies’ abuse is censorship, not free speech
Back in the days when Usenet was the main place online for discussion (if not the only), before web forums and blogs had been heard of (or at least, were anything like as sophisticated...
On Freedom of Information, the IRA and the Taliban
For the digital revolution, this is the Robespierre moment | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian Simon Jenkins is arguing that he agrees with Tony Blair who said in 2010 it...
Ann Leslie on how the media foments Islamophobia
Just as I was writing my post about the validity of the term ‘Islamophobia’ yesterday morning, the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live programme were discussing it. A hotline called “Tell MAMA” (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) had...
Islamophobia: when the reality retires, we can retire the term
Obliged to Offend: It’s time to stop using the term ‘islamophobia’ (reproduced at Harry’s Place) Back when I was at college, a feminist lecturer had a sticker on her door: “I’ll be a post-feminist...
Netroots 2012: a review
I found out about Netroots 2012 through a tweet by Sue Marsh, one of the main authors of the Spartacus Report, earlier in the week and decided to go, more or less on the...
Niqab ban reflects Islamophobia and a security-obsessed culture
Lessons in Islamophobia (from CounterFire) This is an article about a Muslim mother who was barred from parents’ evening at her son’s school because the staff insisted on her removing her face-covering for “security”...
Blair blocked truth about Iraq from cabinet
Blair blocked Cabinet from hearing legal advice on Iraq – UK Politics – UK – The Independent The recently published diaries of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former “spin doctor” who had been at his...