Spelling reform and cultural vandalism
I just posted an article to the Sharpener in response to the article in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins on Friday trying to arouse interest in "reforming" English spelling. He thinks it's great that...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Why “spelling reform” is cultural vandalism
Last Friday, in the Guardian, Simon Jenkins wrote that he welcomed the decision of the Scottish Qualifications Authority that they would accept text-message spellings in school examinations in “a direct challenge to the English...
Niqab row “has increased veil’s popularity”
BBC NEWS: How veil remarks reinforced its support How Jack Straw's comments on his dislike of the niqab (and the idiotic tabloid press campaign which followed it) increased the popularity of the veil among...
Searchlight features Nazi bombs and niqab
The latest edition of the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight on last month's incident where chemical precursors to explosives were found at a house belonging to a member of the British National Party, which was...
One Friday for British Muslims
From the Guardian: One Friday This is an article, which lasted several pages in the print edition with photos, about a number of British Muslims and what they did the Friday before last. They...
Aftab Malik on Schwartz’s defamations
Over at www.Mas'ud Khan's blog, Aftab Ahmad Malik (of Amal Press tears apart a recent article by the infamous Stephen Schwartz in which he once again airs his vendetta against Shaikh Hamza Yusuf, accusing...
Ugly modernist plan for Olympic mosque
Could Britain's mosques ever compete with the east's great places of worship? This article featured in yesterday's Guardian's G2 supplement, and unlike the online version it had a picture of the new proposed mosque...
I know my rights!
Duncan Mac-Vicar P.: LISTEN I HAVE MY RIGHTS!!!! This is a blog entry I pulled off one of the tech sites I read, which tells the story of what happened when a man in...
Impressions of Women Only Jihad
I had been eagerly anticipating Channel 4’s Dispatches programme Women Only Jihad, which follows a group of female activists from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee as they fight to get admission to various mosques. One of these is in Ilford, Essex, and the other in Blackburn, Lancashire. The issue of women’s access to mosques is a major issue throughout the Muslim communities in both the UK and USA, with the filthy conditions of some women’s areas leading some sisters to support women’s admission to the main prayer area. In a number of mosques, however, there simply is no facility and women are simply not allowed entry, which is something the girls from MPACUK were seeking to remedy.
Women, the niqab and the mosque
First up: there is a programme on tomorrow (Monday) evening on Channel 4 entitled Women Only JIhad, about the struggle for Muslim women to gain admittance to a number of mosques in northern England....
Shaikh Hilali, Westerners and rape
In the past week, the storm over the sermon delivered a month ago by the Egyptian imam Taj al-Din al-Hilali, the imam of a major mosque in Sydney, Australia, and supposed “mufti of Australia”, has broken, with commentary on a number of Muslim blogs (and no doubt many more non-Muslim ones), the sermon being front-page news even here in the UK and becoming a main topic of conversation on this morning’s Vanessa Feltz show. Feltz blatantly misquoted the imam, suggesting that he had compared any woman covered less than completely to uncovered meat, which is not what he said at all. What he did say was pretty offensive, however.
Windsor arson “not racially motivated”
Via Pickled Politics, it's been revealed that Thames Valley police believe that the arson attack on a house that was due to be inhabited by injured Iraq veterans, widely reported to have been carried...
The latest native informer
Islamophobia Watch this weekend drew attention to the Sunday Times’ article on Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden’s answer to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who scarpered to the USA once doubt had been cast on her grounds for any status in the Netherlands. She is the “integration and equality” minister in the recently elected conservative government, and advocates such policies as adolescent girls being checked for evidence of having undergone genital mutilation, the criminalisation of arranged marriages, no state funding for religious organisations, and that “immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job”.
What a veiled woman can do
Nzingha has an excellent article, ma sha Allah, regarding some of the popular perceptions about what women can and can't do in a veil, in response to a particularly stupid article in the Arab...
Why British Asian women are moving home
The Guardian: Going Back to My Roots This is an interesting article from today's Guardian about British women of Pakistani origin who are content to settle in Lahore which, despite the oppressive image of...
Moral Maze fails to rebut Mel’s misrepresentations
This week the BBC's panel discussion programme The Moral Maze discussed the issue of religious symbols, in a week following not only the infamous niqab debate but also an incident where a flight attendant...
Enough of the silly veil-dabbling articles
The Guardian today printed an article by the journalist Zaiba Malik about her experiences wearing the niqab for a day around London. This follows last night's Tonight with Trevor McDonald slot in which Saira...
Muslim pupils “more liberal and tolerant”
BBC NEWS: Muslim students 'more tolerant' A Home Office-funded study of three schools in Burnley and Blackburn, two notoriously segregated towns in northern England, discovered that Muslim pupils had more liberal and tolerant attitudes...
The other side of micro-credit
The Micro-Credit Cult This is an article from a free-market libertarian website (called *The Free Market*) regarding the Grameen Bank, the institution run by the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Younus. Among other...
An insider’s view on niqab
What follows is an account of the experiences of a young sister in Canada who has been wearing the niqab since she was 17 and at school. Her name is Ardo; she is of Somali origin and lives in Ottawa, and is presently in her fourth year at university. I wanted to present a real sister’s experience and perhaps defence of the niqab, because although I strongly defend the right of Muslim women to wear it (and, insha Allah, I may post a more comprehensive defence either here or at the Sharpener either today or tomorrow), I am not best-placed to do so as a man, so I sought Ardo’s experiences. What she told me was both enlightening and sometimes depressing.