BBC London and its “sudden death” swearing policy
Last night I was listening to the late-night show on BBC London hosted by Jumoké Fashola who was talking about "modern icons" in response to a feature on so-called cultural icons on the BBC...
Category: Media
Spelling reform and cultural vandalism
I just posted an article to the Sharpener in response to the article in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins on Friday trying to arouse interest in "reforming" English spelling. He thinks it's great that...
Searchlight features Nazi bombs and niqab
The latest edition of the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight on last month's incident where chemical precursors to explosives were found at a house belonging to a member of the British National Party, which was...
One Friday for British Muslims
From the Guardian: One Friday This is an article, which lasted several pages in the print edition with photos, about a number of British Muslims and what they did the Friday before last. They...
Impressions of Women Only Jihad
I had been eagerly anticipating Channel 4’s Dispatches programme Women Only Jihad, which follows a group of female activists from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee as they fight to get admission to various mosques. One of these is in Ilford, Essex, and the other in Blackburn, Lancashire. The issue of women’s access to mosques is a major issue throughout the Muslim communities in both the UK and USA, with the filthy conditions of some women’s areas leading some sisters to support women’s admission to the main prayer area. In a number of mosques, however, there simply is no facility and women are simply not allowed entry, which is something the girls from MPACUK were seeking to remedy.
Shaikh Hilali, Westerners and rape
In the past week, the storm over the sermon delivered a month ago by the Egyptian imam Taj al-Din al-Hilali, the imam of a major mosque in Sydney, Australia, and supposed “mufti of Australia”, has broken, with commentary on a number of Muslim blogs (and no doubt many more non-Muslim ones), the sermon being front-page news even here in the UK and becoming a main topic of conversation on this morning’s Vanessa Feltz show. Feltz blatantly misquoted the imam, suggesting that he had compared any woman covered less than completely to uncovered meat, which is not what he said at all. What he did say was pretty offensive, however.
Windsor arson “not racially motivated”
Via Pickled Politics, it's been revealed that Thames Valley police believe that the arson attack on a house that was due to be inhabited by injured Iraq veterans, widely reported to have been carried...
Not offended by Apple Store
Muslim Website Says Muslims Aren't Offended By Apple Store – altmuslim.com It seems people are trying to manufacture a "Muslim outrage" over the new Apple Store building in New York, which is of a...
The Chechen silence
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The Chechen silence Thomas de Waal on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, which he says “leaves a terrible silence in Russia and an information void about a...
More on the niqab situation
First up, here's Abu Eesa: "this is an excellent opportunity for qualified Muslims to debunk the mysteries behind such a visually obvious, mysterious and perhaps even shocking statement of a Muslim woman’s identity". As...
Woolas: “appease the far right!”
A junior minister, David Woolas, has offered his two-pennyworth on the niqab controversy in today's Sunday Mirror, not online, by suggesting that it could play into the hands of the far right: "It can...
Open season on Muslims
It seems to have been open season on Muslims in the media the last few days, with three inflammatory anti-Muslim stories becoming front page news in either the morning or the evening papers in as many days. First it was the Pc Bashar story, which turns out to have been exaggerated anyway, but nonetheless made the front pages of the tabloids and was the lead story on Vanessa Feltz’s phone-in, with the host branding it “pick-and-mix policing”. Then there was the “Jack Straw on veiling” controversy, and then the petty incident of the Muslim cab driver who refused to carry a blind woman with a guide dog.
Why the women were sent home in 1945
Carol Sarler, in today's Daily Mail, suggests that the BBC Radio 4 staple Woman's Hour has no real purpose now that women's issues, such as the weight one sometimes puts on after a pregnancy...
Regarding Abu Izzadeen and his many wives
Did anyone read the article in yesterday's Evening Standard about how Abu Izzadeen (Omar Brookes), the ex-Muhajiroun activist who heckled John Reid at his Leyton speech last week, is "looking for a second, third...
One interview, two extremists
We've all heard by now about how the Home Secretary, John Reid, was heckled by Omar Brookes (Abu Izzaddeen) ([1], [2]) when he went to address Muslims in Leyton, east London, yesterday (he also...
9/11 film made by religious right activist
Guardian Unlimited: BBC did not know of 9/11 film’s link to religious right Anyone see that “path to 9/11” film that was on BBC1 earlier this week? It turns out that the director was...
Marcel Berlins: Muslims let down by spokesmen’s poor English
The Guardian's legal writer Marcel Berlins has a column in today's paper about how certain causes – in particular, Palestine and Muslims – are continually let down by the poor English displayed by the...
How we have, and haven’t, moved on
Ben Macintyre wrote yesterday in the Times that, despite the occasional talk of a Muslim “fifth column” in Britain, there has been no scare remotely comparable to those surrounding German spies in the early...
Why Misbah isn’t going back to Mama
Osama has been doing a good job, ma sha Allah, of keeping up with the story of Misbah Iram AKA "Molly Campbell" ([1], [2]), a combination of her nickname and her mother's boyfriend's name....
Sookhdeo on terrorism and Islamic schools
This afternoon someone from the Evening Standard sent me a copy of an article the paper had printed by the infamous Patrick Sookhdeo, an apostate given to writing inflammatory and inaccurate articles about Islam...