Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
BBC Viewfinder: I'm a photographer… This is all about the problems some photographers have been having taking pictures in 'sensitive' locations, particularly in London; these places have also included shopping centres, many of them...
The Daily Mail has recently been running a campaign over several issues to stop the British computer hacker, Gary McKinnon, from being extradited to the USA to face charges over cracking American military and...
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...
In case anyone was really thinking that the Tories had become the party of civil liberties in the UK (rather than the party which started the ball rolling on bringing in laws restricting the...
Jack Straw: Our record isn't perfect. But talk of a police state is daft | Comment is free | The Guardian Jack Straw (currently the Justice secretary in the British government) wrote in yesterday's...
Some sense from a columnist at the Times, no less: it was the USA who rounded up men too casually in their "war on terror", and it is they who should take in the...
Marcel Berlins: Rights and responsibilities bill is all wrong (from the Guardian) Marcel Berlins in today's Guardian on one big flaw in the proposed "charter of rights and responsibilities": Adding responsibilities to rights will...
Recently I had an exchange with an old school acquaintance who accused me of defending an enemy of my country, namely Abu Hamza, on my blog. Abu Hamza is currently in jail, having served...
Further to Tuesday's post about the threat posed by anonymous court testimony, there is a letter in today's paper, in reply to the article I blogged, from two rape campaigners (Cristel Amiss of the...
Among the people who have entered the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election, triggered by the resignation of David Davis to fight on a civil liberties platform is Jill Saward (campaign site here), who is...
The Official Website of Shaykh Pirzada | News | Shaykh Pirzada condemns 42-day detention Further to the controversy over whether the British Muslim Forum's shaikhs have supported or opposed the position of Khurshid Ahmed,...
We're a nation of interfering traffic wardens | Camilla Cavendish – Times Online An excellent article (ma sha Allah) in the Times on Thursday (yes, I sometimes read papers other than the Guardian, although...
The Sun reported today that "Britain's top Muslim" had given his support for the government's plan to increase the time police can hold someone on terrorist charges to 42 days, from the current 28....
As you can see, I have not blogged much this week, mainly out of being tired after getting up in the morning to do various driving jobs. However, it's Sunday and I'm well and...
Yesterday a campaign was launched to ban a device called the Mosquito, which emits a high-pitched sound audible only to young people, intended to disperse groups of them who loiter in public places and...
BBC – Radio 4 – News and Current Affairs – Recruiting Muslim Spies This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about attempts by the British security services to recruit Muslims as informants, supposedly to...
This morning they were talking on Today about the woman who called herself the “Lyrical Terrorist”, who wrote ghoulish poems about slicing people’s heads off and was convicted of possessing material “likely to be...
CCTV is no silver bullet – it risks making life less safe – Guardian Unlimited A timely article by Libby Brooks about the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK. We have 20% of...
Yesterday, several British political blogs were pulled down, including Bloggerheads, that of the former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, Bob Piper and Boris Johnson, when their web host gave in to threatening letters from lawyers acting for the Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is trying to buy Arsenal football club. The threats were in response to allegations posted on Murray’s blog, which were reproduced here among other places. I can’t testify that what Murray says is true, of course, but Murray himself says has not received any correspondence from Usmanov’s lawyers. They have gone for the easy option of simply censoring his claims by leaning on his web hosts. (The whole article is still available at Indymedia.)
Guardian Unlimited: Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here’s why This is a reaction by a feminist to the decision by the Catholic church in Ireland to tell schools to shut down their...