Letter to the BBC about Vanessa Feltz
This is a letter I wrote to David Robey, the managing editor of BBC London, about the Vanessa Feltz show last Monday, in which she recycled a story from the Daily Star about a...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
No ‘Somali Taliban’
Did anyone see the Channel 4 documentary on the Islamists' takeover of southern Somalia yesterday evening (Unreported World, 7:30pm)? The documentary made repeated comparisons to the Taliban and alleged that the Islamic Courts Union...
Zeyno Baran ‘fabricating exclusivity’
There's a letter in this week's Newsweek refuting the claim by Zeyno Baran in last week's edition that there is a 50-50 likelihood of a coup in Turkey in the coming year (see this...
Alice Walker and her views on Muslim women
Guardian Unlimited: No retreat Sara Wajid interviews the novelist Alice Walker, best known for writing The Color Purple and – uh, not much else. They discuss the recent elections, 9/11 and the reaction to...
Bindel and Bennett on attitudes to the Ipswich murders
I'm sure that by now the Ipswich murders are known far beyond the UK – for those who have not heard, five young prostitutes have gone missing from the red light district of Ipswich...
Meeting the Queen and PM – but still being kicked out
Guardian: Downing Street guest faces deportation The Guardian and the Independent today reported on the bizarre story of Farhat Khan, a woman who fled to the UK on advice from a colleague at the...
Feltz pinches story from the Star
This morning, Vanessa Feltz took her BBC London radio show to a new low by recycling a story from the Black Hole, otherwise known as the Daily Star, about non-Muslims supposedly being banned from...
Pinochet: goodbye and good riddance
It was with some delight that I read the news this evening that General Pinochet had died. It cheered me up somewhat since I've been feeling rather depressed this week. I don't have any...
Winterval? Bah, humbug!
Today's Guardian features an investigation into the alleged "War on Christmas", in which various council, health service, charity and education functionaries supposedly erase reference to Christmas, prevent people from putting up Christmas light displays...
Khadija Ravat and the niqab’s good name
The contrived controversy over the Channel 4 “Alternative Christmas Message” dragged on today, with the Daily Mirror featuring an interview with the lady in which she told the interviewer that she, being a patriotic British citizen, will be watching the Queen rather than her own message. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, however, comes out with the usual attack on the niqab, alleging that Channel 4 “has decided to glamorise and validate the veil, showing cool indifference to the meanings of one of the most violently contested symbols in the world today”. The article appeared in the Evening Standard, which does not generally publish its opinion pieces online.
I am OK
Greetings and as-Salaamu 'alaikum to my overseas readers, Some news outlets have reported that a "severe tornado" had struck London today. While there were severe storms in many areas of London, the tornado itself...
Khadija’s Christmas message
Via Deenport and Pickled Politics, we hear that Channel 4 is planning to have a woman in niqab to read their “alternative Christmas message” this year: A veiled Muslim woman will deliver this year’s...
Sat-navs and civil liberties
This week the old chestnut of “road pricing” – that is, charging motorists by the mile depending on where they drive and when – appeared again in a report comissioned by the Government and produced by the former British Airways chief Rod Eddington, which appeared on Friday. The report “concludes that the potential benefits of charging motorists for using roads will outweigh the costs of the scheme” and that charging “will put some people off driving entirely, cut congestion and carbon emissions and could raise up to £16bn a year in payments”.
Zeyno Baran: new treason threat to Turkey
More on the situation in Turkey: Zeyno Baran of the "Hudson Institute" has an article in the current edition of Newsweek alleging that there is a 50% chance of the Turkish military staging a...
Is Douglas Murray making up facts?
The Social Affairs Unit – Douglas Murray argues that the Papacy has been degraded by Pope Benedict's U-turn on Turkey's entry to the EU Douglas Murray, author of the author of the Social Affairs...
Misbah case: the mother should let her go
Comment is free: If you love somebody … Yvonne Roberts argues that the best thing for Misbah Rana's mother to do if she actually cares for her daughter is to let her go: Whatever...
Old Europe, new Europe
This is a shocking story from today’s (Tuesday’s) Guardian about a new wave of persecution of central Europe’s Roma (Gypsy) minority, which has started to take the form of destruction of Roma neighbourhoods and...
Religious arbitration in the UK
BBC 'Magazine' feature: An end to one law for all? A very interesting (and, I'm sure, controversial) feature on the largely little-known system of arbitration in the UK. The best-known example is the Jewish...
Prostitutes and druggies welcome – but no veils please
Intolerance in Europe – washingtonpost.com An editorial from today's WaPo which highlights the hypocrisy of Europe's increasing intolerance towards its Muslim minority: Sometimes the bigots portray their crude attacks on Muslim beliefs and culture...
Rats out, roaches in as Nazis try to butter up Jews
There is a letter in the current edition of the Jewish Chronicle, the "establishment" paper of the British Jewish community, from Alan Goodacre defending the British National Party from this article by Melanie Phillips...