Yes, the law DOES apply to middle-class White people
This past week or so, there have been two major news stories in the UK about men arrested for saying things on the Internet that made a strong suggestion of violence that may not...
Category: Terrorism
Who’s radicalising who?
Today it was revealed that a report commissioned by University College London, the college where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to bomb a plane from Amsterdam to the USA last December, concluded that he...
White guy threatens to bomb airport, gets slap on wrist, much whingeing ensues
Last week a guy called Paul Chambers was fined a total of £1,000 (all but £385 of which was either costs or a "victim surcharge") for posting a tweet threatening to blow up an...
Bombs in breast implants?!
The Sun today put out a story alleging that female suicide bombers were being fitted with bombs disguised within breast implants so that they couldn’t be detected by airport screening devices, according to “terrorist...
Further thoughts on Qadri fatwa
A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about Dr Tahir ul-Qadri’s fatwa condemning suicide bombings. It seems to have provoked the biggest debate of pretty much any recent post on here since...
Qadri’s fatwa breaks no new ground
The London Evening Standard yesterday had a two-page feature on a forthcoming fatwa by the leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran group, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, which unequivocally condemns suicide bombings. The feature is dominated by a...
Attempt to link Islamic societies to terrorism
Last Thursday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Report programme in which they attempted to “investigate” the links between British university Islamic societies (or ISocs) with terrorism, on the basis that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalib, who...
Juan Cole: Bin Laden tape irrelevant
Informed Comment: The Irrelevance of Bin Ladin Juan Cole on why the latest Bin Laden tape is most probably faked, as its contents are not in keeping with his past style and wasn’t picked...
Terrorism and privacy
So, once again a terrorist associated with al-Qa’ida has nearly taken out an aeroplane, and governments are scrabbling around trying to find ways to prevent that exact type of attack from ever happening again....
More scaremongering over ISOCs and al-Qa’ida
Following the nonsense in the Daily Mail from Melanie Phillips (last entry) on Monday, there is a front-page story in the Times this morning claiming that the guy who tried to bomb the plane...
My thoughts on Lockerbie ‘bomber’ release
Today, Abdul-Basit Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of planting the bomb which destroyed a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988, was released on compassionate grounds as he is terminally ill with...
Terrorists getting easy ride from media and law
New Statesman – Know your enemy Mehdi Hasan, the New Statesman’s senior politics editor, on a man stopped in his tracks while preparing to use tennis balls as bombs, whose case hardly got any...
“If you dislike them, report them”
Fareena Alam (on Facebook) linked this page at BoingBoing, sending up the recent paranoia-inducing "if you suspect it, report it" posters put out by the British Transport Police with dozens of "remixes" submitted by...
Who doesn’t deserve a funeral?
Harry’s Place » A Single Step The above post at Harry's Place is by the infamous Shiraz Maher (this is the guy who says he got involved in Islamism after 9/11 and changed his...
Bombay attacks may have been by Mafia
Misha Glenny, a noted author of books on the underworld, suggests that the Bombay-Karachi mafia known as "D-Company" may have been involved in last week's attacks, as they were in earlier bombings. The "kingpin"...
Bombay revisisted
So, it seems a lot of Muslims disagree with me and Umar over the perceived need to condemn the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay. Amad at Muslim matters was one of the first Muslims...
Western Muslims should not condemn Bombay attacks
A list of reasons why American Muslims should not fall over themselves to condemn the terrorist attacks in Bombay (I refuse to use the name Mumbai; although it is correct in two of the three local languages, this blog is in English, not Marathi or Gujarati, and I refuse to honour a Hindu nationalist renaming), and I think much the same applies to other western Muslims.
Faith schools “cause terrorism”, says prof
Will there be no end to the repetitions of the myth that faith schools are the cause of the problems in Northern Ireland? A professor called David Canter has published a study, based on...
MI5: there is no terrorist profile
The Guardian today published a lengthy article about an MI5 report they had obtained (which was restricted), which stated that there was no real profile which could indicate what sort of young Muslim would...
The terrorism “experts” who are anything but
Status of terrorism experts questioned (Education Guardian) The Education Guardian casts doubt on the number of so-called terrorism experts who have gained prominence since 9/11, some of whom (like Evan Kohlmann) have been called...