The politics of Gurkha resettlement
The astonishing history of a 200-year-old British-Gurkha friendship | UK news | The Guardian This is an article from yesterday’s Guardian about the issue of whether all of the older ex-Gurkhas should be allowed...
Author: Matthew Smith
The need for constructive discussion on tariqa problems
The last few weeks have seen an upsurge in attacks on shaikhs on various blogs, particularly on Umar Lee’s site and Salafi Burnout. It all started with Umar’s post about so-called Rand Institute Muslims...
Rachel North: no truth or justice yet
Rachel from North London has posted her reaction to the verdicts in the terrorism trial at Kingston Crown Court today: So there will never be justice, but there can be the other thing so...
Kids are kids
Editor-At-Large: Our bitching and bullying is a form of class warfare – Janet Street-Porter, Commentators – The Independent Yesterday, this article by Janet Street-Porter on the depressing saga of the boy who represented the...
BBC: Twin sisters, two faiths
BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Twin Sisters, Two Faiths Anna Scott-Brown about their choices to follow two very different faiths – Islam and Christianity. They discuss their strongly-held but separate beliefs, and...
“Civil war” in US anti-Muslim blogosphere
The Washington Independent » Civil War Raging in Right-Wing Blogosphere Or how the alliance between Little Green Footballs and its numerous offspring of mostly Christian (and sometimes Jewish), right-wing, anti-Muslim blogs have fallen out...
Erith scandal: a sign of Labour’s degradation
I have not had anything to say about the Draper/McBride smear story, mainly because the government actually had nothing to do with it, and it was all about suggestions being passed around by staff...
Rising anger at police thuggery
Since the G20 protests three weeks ago, there has been a rising tide of protest against the thuggish behaviour of the police which was witnessed, and recorded, by demonstrators and some bystanders, particularly at...
Refuting Taj Hargey: hadith and McCarthyism
Taj Hargey had a lengthy whinge printed in The Times last Friday, in which he complained of having been “victimised, like other forward-looking Muslims, by a campaign of classic McCarthyism”: Just as Senator Joseph...
Should women de-feminise for the office?
There is an article published on the London Times website yesterday, by a woman commenting on the opinion of the dressmaker to Gordon Brown’s wife, a woman whose day job is at a hedge...
Waterloo Road stretches the bounds of credibility
OK, so hands up who’s watched Waterloo Road? It’s a BBC drama series set in a northern English urban school. It’s run for a number of series, but this one has gone all out...
Smug charlatan Hargey screws thousands out of Muslim Weekly
Taj Hargey has won a five-figure sum (also reported here and here) from the Muslim Weekly, a slim tabloid published in London, for their claim that he was a Qadiani. This claim was inaccurate,...
Riding a tiger through stupid protest laws
Today there was a substantial impromptu demonstration in London by Sri Lankan Tamils, who first occupied Westminster Bridge before being forced by riot police into the centre of Parliament Square, where they still were...
Women respond to Melville
Following my rant about Kate Melville's letter in last Saturday's Guardian, two women (one Muslim, one probably not) respond in today's paper: Kate Melville weeps for the hijab- and niqab-wearing Muslim women who have...
“If you dislike them, report them”
Fareena Alam (on Facebook) linked this page at BoingBoing, sending up the recent paranoia-inducing "if you suspect it, report it" posters put out by the British Transport Police with dozens of "remixes" submitted by...
Is the hijab just a waste of time?
Last Monday, there was an article by a sister called Jana Kossaibati on finding suitable clothes to go with hijab, complete with a picture feature on various items that the author thought fit the...
Symbol of aspiration or WAG in chief?
Yesterday, while Barack Obama was discussing how to save the world economy with Gordon Brown, Berlusconi et al, Michelle Obama put in a planned, but mostly unannounced, visit to a girls’ school in Islington,...
Legal lottery?
Today a man was jailed for four years for the manslaughter of a man his partner accused of jumping a queue in a Sainsbury’s supermarket near Wimbledon, south London. The woman called up Tony...
The government’s preferred Muslim spokesmen
Gary Younge has a fantastic piece in today’s Guardian which rips apart the government’s attitudes towards representatives of the Muslim community: Somewhere out there is the Muslim that the British government seeks. Like all...
Target culture and the low rape conviction rate
Technorati Tags: kirk reid Last Thursday, for the second time in a month, a man was jailed for a series of sexual assaults, including rapes, on women in south London, and among the major...