Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
Three articles today's papers on the ongoing niqab controversy. First off, here's the actor Steven Berkoff in today's Independent letters: For Jack Straw it concerns his ability to read the mind on the human...
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The Chechen silence Thomas de Waal on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, which he says “leaves a terrible silence in Russia and an information void about a...
EducationGuardian.co.uk: Do not contact the parents This story appeared yesterday in the Guardian's education supplement and concerns young Asian girls (often Muslims) taken out of school to go "back home" to get married, often...
First up, here's Abu Eesa: "this is an excellent opportunity for qualified Muslims to debunk the mysteries behind such a visually obvious, mysterious and perhaps even shocking statement of a Muslim woman’s identity". As...
Iain Dale: Sir Ian Blair Says New Terror Attack Could Lead to Internment British blogger Iain Dale on a meeting at the Reform club in London, at which the Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair...
A junior minister, David Woolas, has offered his two-pennyworth on the niqab controversy in today's Sunday Mirror, not online, by suggesting that it could play into the hands of the far right: "It can...
It seems to have been open season on Muslims in the media the last few days, with three inflammatory anti-Muslim stories becoming front page news in either the morning or the evening papers in as many days. First it was the Pc Bashar story, which turns out to have been exaggerated anyway, but nonetheless made the front pages of the tabloids and was the lead story on Vanessa Feltz’s phone-in, with the host branding it “pick-and-mix policing”. Then there was the “Jack Straw on veiling” controversy, and then the petty incident of the Muslim cab driver who refused to carry a blind woman with a guide dog.
Here is a police statement regarding the malicious story circulated in the press yesterday regarding PC Alexander Omar Basha, who was excused duty guarding the Israeli embassy in London for the duration of this...
The author of this article at Comment is Free drew this outrageous conclusion to her story about growing up in a Pakistani family which wasn’t that religious but was very strongly “traditional” with regard...
Carol Sarler, in today's Daily Mail, suggests that the BBC Radio 4 staple Woman's Hour has no real purpose now that women's issues, such as the weight one sometimes puts on after a pregnancy...
Over the last couple of weeks, two separate news stories have emerged, both related to people owning toys which, frankly, are too big and grown up for them: dogs and cars. Last weekend a...
BBC News Video: Advertisers targeting Ramadan A BBC news report on how Ramadan keeps Muslim families at home together – which often, in practice, means in front of the TV, which advertisers see as...
New Statesman – Watching you watching me Brendan O'Neill (of Spiked fame) on the huge popularity of CCTV cameras in the UK, including a visit to a hidden "spy bunker" beneath London's Trocadero centre,...
Did anyone read the article in yesterday's Evening Standard about how Abu Izzadeen (Omar Brookes), the ex-Muhajiroun activist who heckled John Reid at his Leyton speech last week, is "looking for a second, third...
Guardian Unlimited: Pundits who contest climate change should tell us who is paying them A follow-up to George Monbiot's three articles in the Guardian's G2 supplement last week on global warming, all edited extracts...
Last Sunday I blogged an article from the Spectator by James Bartholomew (now back behind the Spectator’s paywall, but you can find an unedited draft at his own blog) in which he announced that...
We've all heard by now about how the Home Secretary, John Reid, was heckled by Omar Brookes (Abu Izzaddeen) ([1], [2]) when he went to address Muslims in Leyton, east London, yesterday (he also...
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote an opinion piece in the Independent yesterday (available here if you care to pay the fee) demanding to know why Muslims did not join demonstrations like the Day for Darfur last...
Guardian Unlimited: George Monbiot on climate change and oil giant ExxonMobil This is a lengthy article, which appeared in today's G2 supplement in the Guardian, by George Monbiot. It is about the "global warming...
It's depressing to see Muslims once again resorting to violence in response, no doubt, to rumours about what the Pope may or may not have said in his speech at Regensburg last week (extracts...