Why British Asian women are moving home
The Guardian: Going Back to My Roots This is an interesting article from today's Guardian about British women of Pakistani origin who are content to settle in Lahore which, despite the oppressive image of...
Category: Community
Muslim pupils “more liberal and tolerant”
BBC NEWS: Muslim students 'more tolerant' A Home Office-funded study of three schools in Burnley and Blackburn, two notoriously segregated towns in northern England, discovered that Muslim pupils had more liberal and tolerant attitudes...
UK Asian girls and forced marriages
EducationGuardian.co.uk: Do not contact the parents This story appeared yesterday in the Guardian's education supplement and concerns young Asian girls (often Muslims) taken out of school to go "back home" to get married, often...
It’s not about her virginity
The author of this article at Comment is Free drew this outrageous conclusion to her story about growing up in a Pakistani family which wasn’t that religious but was very strongly “traditional” with regard...
Muslim women, hijab and employment
Guardian Unlimited: Why are so many of Britain's Muslim women unemployed? A report from yesterday's Guardian on how women from ethnic minorities generally, but particularly those of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin have low economic...
Review of Gita Saghal’s Hecklers appearance
Last Saturday Gita Saghal of Awaaz South Asia Watch and “Women Against Fundamentalisms”, an organisation which monitors and opposes religious fundamentalism in south Asia, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s programme Hecklers, so-called because one...
Shaikh Muhammad Pirzada launches website
[The website of Shaikh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada](http://www.mihpirzada.com/home.html), the founder of Jamia al-Karam in Retford, Notts (England) and one of this country’s most renowned *ulama*, has been launched on the [Night of Isra &...
“Sufi Muslim Council” exposed
Sufi Muslim Council Exposed: The 'Neoconservative' Sufi Muslim Council An anonymously written, but lengthy and detailed, article showing the links the so-called Sufi Muslim Council, a body which has been promoted in recent weeks...
Inconveniencing the disabled
My work as a delivery driver often requires me to lift heavy items up several flights of steps, repetitively. It’s a huge inconvenience and annoyance, and the buildings involved are often quite new, leading...
Little justice for race attack victims
SocietyGuardian.co.uk" "Don't you want to know why I'm bleeding?" An article from the Society supplement in today's Guardian on victims of racist attacks in the UK and how difficult it can be for them...
Bodi: racists “just jealous of Asian success”
Guardian Unlimited: The racists are driven by envy of Asian success Faisal Bodi (of Q-News and fairly regular contributor to the Guardian) on the social breakdowns which affect many of the mainly white estates...
Monica Ali “just fanning communal rivalry”
Being at work and too tired to blog in the evening, I missed the whole story of the opposition in Brick Lane to the filming of Monica Ali's novel of the same name. The...
The hypocrisy of Fadela Amara
The Guardian today has an interview with French-Algerian "feminist" Fadela Amara. Here is described the second of two incidents which were influential in this woman's career, which took place in October 2002: French women...
Al-Ghurabaa and “Saved Sect” banned
The BBC reports that the Government has banned al-Ghurabaa and the "Saved Sect" (along with the Baluchistan Liberation Army and a number of Kurdish groups, including PKK fronts). It has not, however, banned Hizbut-Tahreer,...
Busybodies on niqab (2)
It's still open season on niqabis, as the Independent prints four letters in response to Deborah Borr's attack on them in Saturday's edition. The letters can be read here in the left-hand column (not...
Another busybody article about hijab
A woman called Deborah Orr (or should that be Deborah Borr) wrote an article for today's (Saturday's) Independent attacking Muslim women who cover their faces ([1], [2]), alleging that face coverings are "are physical...
Muslims, show us your moderation (for the 1,236th time)
On the same day that the Times (and the ITV evening news) featured a Populus opinion poll which supposedly showed that 13% of Britain’s Muslims think that the four men who carried out the...
The Bengali rambling women
BBC NEWS | England | London | Rambling in headscarves The BBC on a group of Bangladeshi ladies in London who go on rambles in London with the Ramblers' Association – normally associated with...
New Statesman slanders Dr Quick, boosts Hargey
This week’s New Statesman (the first I’ve had through the door on a now ended subscription offer of £4.80 for three months) has on its front page a feature marking the anniversary of the 7th July bombings last year. There are two long articles, one by Shiv Malik (yep, him again) on the background of the bomber Shazad Tanweer and one by Ziauddin Sardar (yep, him again) on young British Muslims. Laughably Shiv’s feature is entitled The Suicide Bomber in his own words, which refers to the personal statement on his UCAS (university application) form that he’s managed to get hold of. Depressingly, as I noted last year when writing about political magazine coverage of the bombings, these two were the only voices within the community the NS could find, with Shiv concentrating on Hizbut-Tahreer, which had nothing to do with the bombings.
British Muslims, alienation and terrorism
The Guardian recently carried two related depressing stories about the Muslim community here and terrorism. The first was that, according to some survey carried out by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, British Muslims had more negative views about their non-Muslim fellow citizens than do Muslims in Europe and more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks