Why be a citizen?
A Moroccan Muslim woman has been refused citizenship in France for wearing the so-called burka and supposedly living in "total submission to her male relatives". Her initial refusal was in 2005, but she has...
Category: Politics
Rape campaigners oppose anonymous testimony
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...
Anonymous testimony: “a perjurer’s charter”
Geoffrey Robertson: There can be no fair trials with this perjurer's charter (from the Guardian today) Geoffrey Robertson QC (a senior British lawyer, with an interest in human rights and anti-censorship issues) on the...
Jill Saward: wrong then, wrong now
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...
Confusion over handshake issue at Irish awards
On Sunday, the Sunday Times reported that a Somali Muslim man lost an award he had been due to receive at a ceremony last Thursday at the Africa Centre in Dublin, Ireland, because he...
Shaykh Pirzada condemns 42-day detention
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,...
A nation of traffic wardens
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...
Britain’s top Muslim? Hardly
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....
Round-up: drinks on the Tube, Blair uniting religions, Mary Whitehouse, high fuel costs
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...
Round-up: Irshad Manji, moons in mosques, the OLPC fiasco, Pauline Campbell, Obama versus Agar, Undercover Mosque
Top Muslim blog piece this week, in my opinion, was brother Marc Manley's piece, The Trouble With Muslim Pundits today. While the establishment are busy fêting the likes of Ed and Maajid here in...
The real “nasty party”
John Harris: The tactics of Crewe expose a truly nasty party: Labour (The Guardian) An exposé of the "dog-whistle" tactics being used in the campaign for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election next week, in...
Letter from me in the New Statesman
New Statesman – Letters My letter, regarding the portrayal of Croydon in Brendan O'Neill's article "What's Driving the BNP?" last Friday, got printed in this week's New Statesman. The letters pages seem only to...
Secular Asians for Secular Democracy
Islamophobia Watch – Home – Stop pandering to Muslims says 'silent majority' Last week an outfit calling itself "British Muslims for Secular Democracy" had their big launch party, attended by Baroness Kishwer Falkner and...
The only white woman on the bus?
Brendan O'Neill interviews the British Nazi Party trying to win hearts and minds in Stanmore (with all the Jews!) and runs into a chick from Croydon bleating about how out of place she is...
London election is not just about race
The recent issue of Red Pepper contains an editorial, written by Oscar Reyes, about the upcoming mayoral elections in London. Reyes notes that Boris Johnson, the Tory challenger for the position against Labour's Ken...
Sister Ardo responds to “Blog Niqaab”
Sister Ardo from Ottawa (whom you may remember contributed to my coverage of the Jack Straw niqaab affair of 2006) has responded to sister Aaminah’s article on observing niqaab while interacting with others over...
The fallacy of multiculturalism helping terrorism
Last week the Royal United Services Institute, "the leading forum in the UK for national and international Defence and Security" founded by the Duke of Wellington, published a report from a panel which included,...
The Mosquito: why it really sucks
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...
Review of London lecture on French hijab politics
This evening the American feminist academic Joan Wallach Scott, a professor of social science at Princeton, NJ, gave a lecture to promote her book, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, 2007) (reviewed in the...
Mrs Brown’s Indian dress
Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been attacked in certain sections of the media for wearing Indian dress on a visit to Delhi as part of a visit...