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...
Category: Community
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...
Muslims, shaikhs and the oppositional mentality
Looking at the discussion which has ensued from Umar Lee’s original “Rand Institute Muslims” post two weeks ago, something which has stuck out is the oppositional attitude of some of the major contributors. It...
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...
A matter of dignity
On Thursday, there were reports about a woman who had taken her former employer, a bar in Mayfair, London, to court for supposedly sacking her for refusing to wear their staff uniform, a short...
ENGAGE goes live; invitation for contributors
For anyone – particularly here in the UK – who’s depressed about losing three great blogs in as many weeks, ENGAGE, a new Muslim organisation dedicated to media monitoring and encouraging political participation, has...
Tablighis: engaging in Bradford, isolating in London – or is it just a misunderstanding?
Olympic mosque could create breeding ground for extremists, says senior Anglican – Telegraph This was in yesterday's Telegraph, and it surprised me how many specific falsehoods and irrelevances could be crammed into one article....
Photos from Eid in the Square
Last Saturday, I attended the Eid in the Square, Trafalgar Square in London to be precise. I caught only the last half of it, which meant two different “nasheed” groups and one guy who...
The importance of religious over ethnic solidarity
Last week, the New Statesman printed a letter from Randhir Singh Bains of Essex, whose letters commonly appear in the centre-left press in the UK, about the history of inter-Asian solidarity in the UK:...
Shaikh Hamza and the Blair malaria programme (updated)
Recently, Shaikh Hamza Yusuf took part in an anti-malaria event recently held in Los Angeles, run by an organisation called Malaria No More which, unbeknown to him, was sponsored by the Tony Blair Faith...
Getting sanctimonious about early moon sightings
This year, as usual, there was a controversy over what day was Eid al-Fitr, with the majority celebrating it on either Tuesday or Wednesday, with some countries waiting until Thursday and some Nigerians having...
Response to Khan & Sikander on Islamic courts
Yesterday, Harry's Place published an article sourced from Gina Khan and one Paul Sikander, attacking Islamic courts and Muslim institutions' marriage practices. I wrote a lengthy article yesterday, but a bug in my blogging...
Ramadan diet poses health risk
From the South African Independent: Poor dietary and lifestyle habits during Ramadan pose grave health risks to fasting Muslims, local doctors and dieticians have warned. Night-time binge eating and consuming too much sugar and...
Ramadan timetable mystery
With the fasting moving back to the very beginning of autumn and the first couple of days fasting being the most difficult they've been since, well, whenever they were last in April, I have...
Marriage contract issue on BBC’s “Sunday”
Radio 4’s programme Sunday, its weekly religious affairs programme broadcast at 7am on Sunday mornings, today featured the “Islamic” marriage contract issue. You can listen to it here until next Sunday when the next...
Exploring the “Islamic” marriage contract
The so-called Islamic marriage contract recently proposed by the Muslim Institute has attracted a lot of attention in the Muslim blogosphere lately, much of it negative, for reasons anyone who has read it will...
Imam’s response to the “Islamic” marriage contract
Haitham al-Haddad (a "salafi" imam based, if I remember rightly, at al-Muntada al-Islami in west London) has given a lengthy response to the recent "Islamic" marriage contract published by the Ghayasuddin Siddiqui front organisation,...
Khalifites at the New Statesman
The Khalifites are, thankfully, a group one does not encounter often as a Muslim these days, but they seem to come in waves when they appear. In the mid-1990s, during the heyday of the...