Aisha’s Young Marriage
Won’t somebody please think of the children (from The Spittoon) This is an article from a liberal perspective on controversies about publications which find fault with the marriage of the Prophet (صل الله عليه...
Author: Matthew Smith
Gordon Brown and legitimacy
Does anyone get sick of hearing the claim that Gordon Brown’s position as prime minister is illegitimate because he wasn’t directly elected? The story goes that because he never contested an election as prime...
They love it, honest
I’ve not long finished watching a BBC Storyville documentary (see it on iPlayer here) on the scientist D. Carleton Gajdusek (pronounced Guy-du-shek), who won a Nobel prize for work on prion diseases (such as...
Religion and cruelty
Today’s Observer carried an opinion piece by the co-author of a book called Does God Hate Women?, to be published by Continuum this week, which gives a brief list of the worst things religious...
The two faces of the BNP
The rise of British racism may be horribly close — The Spectator Fraser Nelson goes “on the stump” (meaning, out knocking on doors) with BNP activists in Hertfordshire and discovers that people are no...
Guardian on comment links and spam
Yesterday’s Guardian Technology supplement had an interesting article on comment spam and the use of the “nofollow” feature to discourage it. My own view on this is that the value of “nofollow” is limited...
Hatemonger Abu Hamza’s sons are crooks
BBC NEWS | England | London | Abu Hamza’s car scam sons jailed Two sons and a stepson of the hate preacher Abu Hamza (real name Mustafa Kamel), who occupied Finsbury Park mosque with...
Is the expenses row something to be proud of?
I’m proud of the fury at MPs’ expenses, by Ally Fogg — Comment is free Two opposing views about the ongoing Parliamentary expenses scandal: one by Joan Smith in yesterday’s Guardian, and one by...
New network card
Today I got the new Belkin network card I ordered from Dell over the weekend. (Obviously, it being a bank holiday on Monday, and having ordered it at the weekend, it took until today...
Clive James on feminism and democracy
BBC NEWS Magazine: Clive James on feminism and democracy Clive James is arguing that the reason feminists are not loud on the issue of promoting democracy abroad when the alternatives are far worse for...
Thugs go on rampage in Luton
The story is starting to come out regarding the display of thuggery and bigotry in Luton last Sunday, in which a group of about 200 broke away from a bigger march and headed for...
French bigots drive Muslim school to the wall
Why are the authorities refusing to fund France’s oldest Muslim school, now facing bankruptcy? | Education | The Guardian Today’s Guardian Education supplement on how bigots in a north Paris education authority are using...
Dorries and the MPs’ expenses debate
I’m sure nobody reading this, even those in the United States, has not heard of the scandals involving British MPs’ expenses. The scandals involve members of Parliament claiming things on parliamentary expenses (i.e. out...
“White privilege” blog carnival is up
Brooke has finally posted her blog carnival on “White privilege and the Ummah”, with my contribution as well as posts from Safiyya of Shalom 2 Salaam, Safiya of Outlines, Ginny, Fairuza/Sabiwabi, Bin Gregory, Nzingha,...
Off to RMW
Insha Allah, tonight I am appearing at a Radical Middle Way event at LSE in London, which also features Shelina Zahra Janmohammed of Spirit21, the sister behind iMuslim, Mr Moo and Omar from DeenPort;...
British tabloid hypocrisy shocker
The Sun today featured the story of a former British soldier whose image was featured in a British Nazi Party election leaflet, in uniform next to the words, “we’re fed up with being sent...
The Captcha nobody could see
To anyone who has tried to comment in the last three hours or so but couldn't because they hadn't entered the Captcha code which never appeared, I have de-activated the plugin which turned out...
White Privilege part 2: if you don’t like the heat …
In the recent discussion on White privilege and the Muslim community, it has been suggested that white converts to Islam who experience both discrimination and difficulty in integrating to their new community have the...
Why I moved to WordPress
I’ve been using Movable Type to run this blog since 2004, except for the middle part of 2005 during which I used WordPress. I was hugely enthusiastic about WordPress when version 1.5 first came...
IJB is now a WordPress site
For anyone who’s surfed in and hasn’t noticed … IJB is now a WordPress blog (again). I intend to explain more about the move in the next day or so (and it’s taken less...