Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Islamophobia Watch – David Cameron accuses Muslims of 'cultural separatism' David Cameron gave this speech at a conference on "Islam and Muslims in the World Today", hosted in London by Cambridge university earlier this...
Lately Jamal at Radical Muslim has been posting requests for people to sign a petition to the UK Prime Minister asking him to approve the construction of the Abbey Mills mosque. Several people have...
Melanie Phillips’s Diary; The Islamic duty to respect Israel Melanie Phillips, courtesy of “Arabs for Israel”, has found a selection of Qur’anic verses which supposedly enjoin Muslims to respect Israel – not the prophet...
This is England is a film about skinheads in the English Midlands in the early 1980s, written and directed by the British director Shane Meadows (interviewed here) and set mostly on a council estate which turns out to be in Nottingham, although no reference to Nottingham is actually made anywhere in the film; some scenes are shot in Grimsby, an east coast port and seaside resort. It mainly revolves around the character of Shaun, a 12-year-old boy who has recently lost his father in the Falklands war, and who is partly based on Meadows (and some of the other characters are also partly based on people Meadows knew).
Brown's betrayal of democracy (Guardian letters) The latest in my occasional series on the impending "divine-right succession" of Gordon Brown to become British Prime Minister: the letters in today's Guardian, which show why it...
In the wake of the recent disappearance, as yet unresolved, of Madeleine McCann on the Algarve in Portugal, nobody who listens to the British media could have missed the flood of smug mums and...
Is the smoking ban a good idea? | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited In a few weeks' time, smoking in enclosed public spaces will become illegal in the UK; such places include pubs and...
BC Radio last week broadcast a programme called Turning Right, which probed the British National Party’s lame attempts to hide the thuggish and criminal natures of a number of its major activists, including its leader, Nick Griffin. Griffin made little effort to conceal his real opinions, asserting that he now believed what he had to, because he would otherwise be extradited to France (“otherwise”, for example, includes maintaining his devotion to Holocaust denial). The programme also gave airtime to an outfit called the Christian People’s Alliance, which they claim drove down the BNP’s support in its white, working-class east London “heartland” by concentrating on local issues. However, the CPA and the BNP are on the same side on one issue: opposition to the so-called “mega mosque”, which is proposed for a site near to the main Olympic stadium. An examination of material issued by the CPA, however, reveals its reliance on misinformation and bigotry.
George Monbiot, in today's Guardian, on the deafening silence of European politicians as Serbia takes the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, the body, entirely independent of the European Union, which runs the European...
Comment is free: The secret to success Salma Yaqoob (Birmingham Respect party activist) is calling for the postal vote to be abolished in order to cut out the electoral fraud which plagued recent elections...
Naomi Wolf has an article in today's Guardian entitled Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, which lists ten things governments generally do when turning a country from a democracy to a dictatorship. It's not...
The Guardian: Common people I’m not sure if the latest bit of royal news has made it across the Pond yet, but over the weekend it was announced that Prince William (heir to the...
BBC NEWS | Health | WHO agrees HIV circumcision plan The World Health Organisation today recommended that the circumcision of boys be used as a means of preventing AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, although obviously...
Sunday Telegraph: A passport to misery, if you ask me… Jenny McCartney, in today's Sunday Telegraph, on the bureaucratic nightmare that the British government's demand that all new passport applicants attend a face-to-face interview...
For the wrongly jailed, there is no Shawshank Redemption ending (Guardian Unlimited) John McManus of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (MOJO, set up by Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six) on the grotesque spectacle...
Anglo-neocons are slaves to America and not serving us (Guardian Unlimited) Geoffrey Wheatcroft (The Strange Death of Tory England, Yo! Blair) on the clique of “Anglo-neocons” surrounding David Cameron whose position on the Iraq...
George Monbiot, in today's Guardian, on the fake consultations which accompany the Olympic developments in east London: chiefly, the difficulties one had to go to in order to get copies of the plans, which...
Last Thursday, Patrick Mercer, the Conservative party’s spokesman for “homeland security”, was sacked from David Cameron’s shadow cabinet for giving an interview to the Times. He was reacting to the establishment of a “new...
Islamophobia Watch drew my attention to an article by Barbara Smoker, former president of the National Secular Society, in the latest edition of the Gay Humanist Quarterly. The edition is freely downloadable but is...
George Monbiot: A glut of barristers at Westminster has led to a crackdown on dissent This was in today’s Guardian (also find it, with references, here at George Monbiot’s own archive). The context is...