Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Minette Marrin: Sentenced to rot in their failed schools (Sunday TImes) A case against another of this government’s stupid recent ideas: keeping kids in school until they’re 18. Theoretically, this is supposed to include...
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...
The Guardian have been serialising extracts from the last book written by the assassinated Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya ([1], [2]). In today's G2 supplement, there is an account of her meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov,...
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 Friday night I went to a City Circle event in London entitled Independent Voices: Challenging the Myth of Monolithic Communities, addressed by two founders of dissenting ethnic organisations, namely Brian Klug of Independent Jewish Voices and Sunny Hundal of the New Generation Network (and Pickled Politics) as well as Ehsan Masood, who writes for Prospect magazine.
Earlier this week, Leeds University cancelled a talk and a two-day workshop which was due to be delivered by the German academic and former adviser to his country's Green Party, Matthias Küntzel, on what...
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...
Melanie Phillips’s Diary » The emperor’s green new clothes Melanie Phillips lapped up the recent documentary entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, a polemic produced by Martin Durkin, a veteran of the old Revolutionary...
New Statesman – Apocalypse now? Johann Hari reviews America Alone, the quasi-novel by Mark Steyn recently published by Regnery (the same publishing house behind a lot of Robert Spencer’s dross) which gives a warning...
A Maltreated Hadith translated from Muhammad Al-Ghazali's (may Allah have mercy on him) Al-'Ilal wal-Adaweyyah by Umm Majeed – The Translators The Translators (in this case, Umm Majeed) give a correct understanding of the...
Southern California InFocus – WAFA SULTAN: Reformist or opportunist? Thanks to Dr Maxtor, who reproduced the whole thing (with some of his usual acerbic commentary), this article exposes the various claims Wafa Sultan has...
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...
Once in a blue moon I find myself agreeing with the ultra-modernist Ziauddin Sardar, who writes a column in the New Statesman (you can see what I’ve written about his other writings in the “ZiaWatch” category). In this week’s New Statesman, he has an article in reaction to the recently published “Muslim Power 100”, which was sponsored by the Islamic Bank of Britain and Carter Andersen (I’m not sure what they do, because the only website under their name is at the time of writing suspended for non-payment of hosting fees). This is supposedly a list of the hundred most powerful Muslims (or people with Muslim names) in the UK right now.
These tots in PVC don't scare me (The Observer) Christina Odone (regular in the Observer and noted contributor to the Catholic press also) noted in last Sunday's Observer the popularity of indecent clothing for...
Further to UZ's post linking a NYT article on fighting email spam, the Guardian's technology supplement today printed an article on a new front in the malware wars: programs which cripple your computer while...
The Guardian today has a long article, entitled simply Faith, about religion and the heated debates it has recently provoked in the UK. Discussed are the usual matters of faith schooling, creationism and the...
Jinnzaman recently blogged a lengthy article by Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller on the subject of the rulings of takfeer, who is entitled to pronounce it, when and why, and how it relates to...