Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
In the past couple of weeks, three events led to much heated discussion about the idea of "communities" in the West, and "community leaders" in particular: a Policy Exchange report (PDF) suggesting, among other...
Radio 4 – The British Mosque This is a BBC Radio 4 programme which was broadcast on Friday, which discusses the debates among architects involved in British mosque design, which actually has practices dedicated...
Mad Mel's Diary: the "War Against the West" Mel comments on the King Fahad Academy controversy, in which a sacked former teacher accuses the school of teaching from a textbook which makes some unflattering...
As an example of the sort of silly conspiracy-mongering George Monbiot was talking about in his article in the Guardian on Tuesday (which I linked), here is a reply to it (third letter down),...
This Monday Charlie Brooker (Guardian columnist of Nathan Barley and TVGoHome fame) told the world why he hates Macs in the most-read page on Comment Is Free this week. He not only hates Macs, but also people who use them and “even … people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did”. Thabet @ Eteraz agrees with him. Brooker reckons that “Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui” and that the “I’m a PC/Mac” adverts, which in the UK feature a comedy duo called Mitchell and Webb, whom I’ve never watched, are “devastatingly accurate” for the wrong reasons.
The Guardian: A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact George Monbiot takes apart the 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change, which advances the well-known "no plane" theory:...
Ayaan Hirsi Magan’s been all over the media like a rash this past week, with a series of adulatory articles and soft interviews. Nobody seems to be willing to take her up on her ludicrous claims that, for example, “the 74 per cent of Muslims under 24 who said in a survey that women should wear the veil and want Sharia law to be introduced have gone for the consistency that Bin Laden offers”, which appears in this Metro interview today.
A Law Unto Themselves (from today's Media Guardian, may require free registration) Peter Wilby (former editor of the New Statesman) on the "consistent and brazen disregard for the contempt laws" which exists in the...
Umar Lee recently posted a ten-part history on the rise and fall of the "salafi da'wah" in the USA (last post, with comments and links to the other nine, here). The whole series made...
The BBC reports that an outfit calling itself the "Terror Free Oil Initiative" has set up a filling station in Omaha, Nebraska, touting oil not imported from countries which "support terror" – meaning just...
Upgrade Rage (from today's Guardian) Tim Dowling on the annoyances of Windows which manifest themselves as "upgrade rage, or Upgrage, the uncontrollable anger which occurs whenever a software upgrade deemed to be either essential...
There are two extracts from Nick Cohen’s forthcoming book What’s Left? published in last Sunday’s Observer, in which he has a weekly column. For anyone who is not familiar with his writing, he is part of the same tendency as Paul Berman (of Dissent magazine and the author of Terror and Liberalism) and Christopher Hitchens; that is to say, he is from a left-liberal background but supports recent western military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and accuses the left generally of betraying its principles in its opposition to them. Until the early 2000s his columns had a strong pro-civil liberties stance and concern for asylum seekers; after the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, he denounced the Stop the War coalition of being an alliance of the “enemies of economic freedom” (the Socialist Workers) and the “enemies of sexual freedom” (the Muslim Association).
The Conservative Party leader David Cameron wrote in today's Observer about the "British values" issues which were under much discussion this past week. Of merit is his debunking of stupid suggestions like having a...
Getting the blog spammers to hang up their affiliations (Guardian Unlimited Technology) An article from today’s Guardian Technology supplement, about the intricacies (as they seem to me) of affiliate schemes and how they help...
It’s not often that we get snow here in London, and even less often that I have to drive in it. I must say, it’s the condition I most fear as a professional driver,...
How racist is Britain? Julian Baggini on why he doesn’t believe most white Britons are racists – even though he heard racist language almost everywhere he went (from today’s Guardian) This was in the...
Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, today called for schools with an overwhelmingly Muslim pupil intake to be closed down and replaced with large academies serving a mixed community. In an interview with the Financial Times (apparently not online, but there’s a synopsis here), he claimed that the present situation of there being schools with an overwhelmingly Muslim intake and pupils who speak a foreign language, like Bangla, at home, “it has become a real strategic security problem”. “They would be much more likely to collaborate with the police and tell them people within their own community are doing things they shouldn’t be doing if they were better integrated,” he alleged.
Further to Wednesday's post on Misbah Rana, there is a well-balanced article on the Guardian comment site today, acknowledging that the recent custody decision on Misbah Rana is "the best, or the least bad,...
BBC Radio 4 – From Molly to Misbah This is a BBC radio programme which was on Radio 4 this afternoon (I’ve not listened to it yet) featuring Misbah Rana, the girl also known...
I don’t know why I was surprised by the spectacle of protests in India, complete with effigy burnings, against the racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood actress, on the notorious Channel 4 programme Big Brother, two nights ago. I did not see the actual episode as (until last night) I didn’t watch this wretched, trashy, clapped-out programme. However, I did hear the discussion of the episode on yesterday morning’s Vanessa Feltz show, and most of it was not sympathetic to the three women responsible.