The rape-as-jihad myth
Some folk reading this are going to start asking why I mention people like Robert Spencer so much on my blog. Well, if Spencer was some guy howling on the sidelines, like so many...
Category: Windbags
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on arbitration
While we’re on the subject of people who pretend to be Muslims and presume their opinions on Muslims and Islam count, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has her take on the Ontario arbitration affair printed in today’s...
Spencer applauds Ontario arbitration axe
Latest in Spencer’s “Canadian Shari’ah Watch” (and here‘s a local Muslimah’s opinion): A hard-won victory for human rights. It is only unfortunate that the other religious arbitration arrangements have to be sacrificed, which feeds...
Crying wolf
If any proof were needed that some Jews will cry “anti-semitism” at the slightest nuance of hostility to their organisations or to Israel, however well-grounded, it comes in Melanie Phillips’ latest “diary” (posh word...
Reflections on last Sunday’s Panorama
I actually wrote most of an article for the Sharpener, a British group blog to which I occasionally contribute, about this awful programme, but stumbled on the bit where I had to deal with...
Rod Liddle on hijab
There is some of the usual “Roddle Twaddle” in the Spectator this week, in which he criticises the government for trying to ban Omar Bakri from “spew[ing] out his rubbish” rather than rebutting it...
Shiv trots out “conveyor belt” claim yet again
The Independent on Sunday today contains yet another multi-page feature on the London bombings and its aftermath, including yet another feature by Shiv Malik in which the “conveyor-belt to terrorism” claim is trotted out...
Patrick Sookhdeo on moderate Islam
I just received a letter from someone at the Evening Standard, asking me if I’d like to write a letter in response to two articles they printed on Friday, one by Patrick Sookhdeo and...
Amir Taheri follow-up
I’d just like to forward this link with regard to Amir Taheri’s anti-hijab lies. The article appeared in the Message magazine last year (hat tip: Dr Maxtor): Hijab and a Revelation that was not
Taheri’s lying on hijab
Faraz Rabbani and Umm Zaid have linked to an opinion piece in the Times, written by Amir Taheri. It contains of a number of lies and deviant opinions about hijab, among them that it...
Explainers, not popes
The British right-wing press’s campaign of vilification against Islam continues today, with no less than three hostile articles by three of the usual suspects: Anne McElroy, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Amir Taheri. The last gets...
Another hoo-hah over Tariq Ramadan
Less than a week after last week’s bombings in London, it appears that Tariq Ramadan is visiting the UK to address young Muslims at the Islamic Cultural Centre near Regent’s Park. The right-wing press...
What does Islam really say about rape?
When I did the feature two days ago on the way various societies, including Muslim societies, oppress women, I had intended to include a section on what certain writers have been saying about the...
Bigots make hay over honour killing
The Independent reported a few days ago that a young woman was murdered in Gaza by members of Hamas, because she was seen walking in the streets with her husband. The story has been...
Prayer rugs? Arabic texts? Must be jihadis!
An amusing observation on Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch site: An additional note about Arizona: last night after I spoke, a woman in the audience told me about a friend of hers who has a...
Schwartz on Sufism
Stephen Schwartz has had yet another article published in his favoured online magazine, David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com, on the subject of Sufism which he promotes as the friendly side of Islam. He starts off with...
Fasaad watch: oddity in coverage of Coptic murders
Spencer at Jihad Watch claims that a group of “Muslim fanatics” are posting to a “Jihadist website” the names, and other details, of Christians who debate with Muslims about religion on PalTalk, as some...
Fasaad watch: the continuing obsession with the Jersey Coptic murders
The other day I suddenly decided to rip down my other blog, The Vane. I can only write so much in one day, and I don’t have the whole day to write (unlike some...
Spencer trots out the ‘apes and pigs’ lie again
Anyone who has not been deflected from reading Robert Spencer's blogs by the nausea they generate will have noticed his 'stuck-record' tendency of going back to the same themes time and time again: taqiyya...
Spencer complains over headscarf in Tennessee
Spencer has obviously forgotten the distinction between personal law and “sociopolitical law”, and indeed, the existence of “socio-personal law”, that is, law governing how people interact with each other and behave around each other....