New twist on moonsighting fitnah
The issue of when to start Ramadan and when to have Eid has been a bone of contention as long as I’ve been Muslim and probably for much longer. I was made aware of...
Category: Organisations & Leadership
The Drumlanrig jolly
Yesterday we heard that various minor British Muslim leaders had presented an ‘accord’ to the king that they had agreed with the leaders of British Judaism, including the Chief Rabbi, a major rabbi from...
Muslim men behaving un-dadly
In the UK there is a charity called “Men Behaving Dadly” which supports fathers and other male carers to improve their relationships with their children through play and other activities (the name is also...
Tories show their repressive side with ban on HT
Yesterday (Monday), out of nowhere as far as I could tell, the Tories announced that they were going to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir, a political party founded in Palestine whose name means Liberation Party, as...
Rushdie, Khomeini and Muslims here and there
I was a child, and a long way from becoming Muslim, when the Rushdie affair happened. My mother was in college going through teacher training, and one of her college friends had a sister...
Do they know what representation means at all?
Last Thursday the BBC radio programme Woman’s Hour (10am, Radio 4) interviewed Zara Mohammed, the new secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain and the first woman to be elected to that role, and...
Review: Proud and Prejudiced
Proud and Prejudiced on Channel 4 (available to watch for another month at the time of writing) Proud and Prejudiced featured Saiful-Islam, one of the public speakers of the group commonly called Al-Muhajiroun, a...
Breaking stereotypes? How?
Muslim women: beyond the stereotype | Life and style | The Guardian G2 carried the above article, and it featured a number of Muslim women who claim they are challenging stereotypes and extremism; they...
Further clarification: Usama Hasan
After I posted my article on Usama Hasan the other day, I found that my blog had been linked to by the secularist Spittoon blog, which had been copied by Harry’s Place. The author...
Usama Hasan: thanks for the apology, now clear off
Recently the east London imam, Usama Hasan, who has been involved with the Quilliam Foundation (a media-friendly group of purported former extremists) and promoting the idea of reconciling Islam with Darwinian theory, went beyond...
What makes a cult?
Recently there has been some discussion on DeenPort on what constitutes a cult, and when a religion becomes a cult. Someone offered the definition that, among Muslims, when one is in a particular group...
Park51 turning into Abbey Mills re-run
I haven’t commented on the Park51 affair yet — the 13-storey mosque and community centre that some group wants to put up in Lower Manhattan — mainly because other Muslims (and others) have said...
Further thoughts on Qadri fatwa
A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about Dr Tahir ul-Qadri’s fatwa condemning suicide bombings. It seems to have provoked the biggest debate of pretty much any recent post on here since...
Qadri’s fatwa breaks no new ground
The London Evening Standard yesterday had a two-page feature on a forthcoming fatwa by the leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran group, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, which unequivocally condemns suicide bombings. The feature is dominated by a...
Attempt to link Islamic societies to terrorism
Last Thursday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Report programme in which they attempted to “investigate” the links between British university Islamic societies (or ISocs) with terrorism, on the basis that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalib, who...
Splitters!
Recently some of us have been debating on Facebook whether to take part in a forthcoming coutner-demo to an al-Muhajiroun front group demo, which was to take place on the 31st. The event was...
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...
Muhajiroun versus Luton white trash
I’ve never cared much for the MuhajiGoons, but seeing this display of “patriotism” by a wannabe lynch mob of Britain’s “finest” made me a bit more sympathetic. They did not seem to be saying...
Muhajiroun disrupt Luton army parade
A small group of young men from al-Muhajiroun (or Muhajigoons, the Voice, the Ears and Eyes of the Morons) yesterday caused a commotion at a parade in Luton by soldiers returning from Iraq. The...
Response to Umar Lee on Shaikh Hamza Yusuf
Umar Lee has posted an exposé of what he calls “Rand Institute Muslims” or RIMs as they supposedly exist in 21st-century America. Their characteristics, according to him, are “detachment from the Islamic Revival”, supporting...