Muslims and Holocaust denial
Jonathan Freedland had a piece in today's Guardian, The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world, in reaction to the recent comments of the president of Iran to the effect that "we"...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Good write-up for al-Karam school
Madrassas have been getting a bad press lately, with this country's Dar al-Uloom schools getting savaged both on the papers and in the news by Andrew Gilligan. Ma sha Allah, nice to see that...
No “honor” killings here
I just discovered a blog by three al-Jazeera workers (courtesy of Dunner) and an entry on it about a simple misunderstanding of language. Someone searched on the al-Jazeera site for stories on "honor killings",...
Worker smelled petrol before explosion
The BBC are interviewing Raheel Ashraf, an eyewitness to this morning's explosions at the Hemel Hempstead oil plant, who stated quite clearly that he smelled fumes before the place went up. In other words,...
Review: MPAC UK and Alan Hart at Friends’ House
Tonight’s event was billed as “The Big Debate”: MPACUK hosting a debate involving their own Asghar Bukhari, former ITV News and Panorama presenter Alan Hart, and Stephen Marks of Jews for Justice for Palestinians....
Bigots’ friend back in shadow cabinet
The BBC is reporting that Boris Johnson, the former editor of the Spectator who allowed the brazenly unbalanced analysis of the July bombings and French riots to appear on his watch has been given...
Another dispatch from a parallel Britain
As Matthew Turner has noticed, Melanie Phillips is fast running out of friends. In just two days, she has decided that the Conservative party, the Metropolitan Police and the Daily Telegraph have somehow deserted...
Bohra sect “sent members to death in Iraq”
The Evening Standard today (Tuesday) reported that the three British visitors killed in Iraq last week were in fact sent by officials of the Dawoodi Bohra sect to pray for its sick 93-year-old Indian...
Cameron wins, and Tory anti-ID pieces
Well, I have to say I'm guardedly optimistic about David Cameron winning the Conservative Party leadership election. When I saw David Davis' campaign page, I saw the complaint about foreigners taking up room in...
Bush praise poem sneaked into textbooks
The Guardian reports today that someone managed to sneak a praise-poem for George W Bush into an English textbook which was being used on 16-year-olds in Pakistani schools: The leader Patient and steady with...
“The Project”: an Islamophobic conspiracy theory
Muslims may not be on course for another set of gas chambers as some seem to think (see this entry), but Islamophobia in Europe is taking on yet another of the characteristics of traditional...
Scares and irrelevances in the New Statesman
An example of the sort of "Ikhwanophobia" which might be bolstered by the recent "Project" revelations is the piece on page 14 of the current New Statesman, entitled "…and yet more leaks", apparently written...
Someone didn’t teach this woman properly
The story of a European female convert to Islam carrying out a suicide mission in Iraq came as a shock to a lot of people, despite the fact that it's not the first European...
The next holocaust?
Ziauddin Sardar for once has an article worth reading in this week’s New Statesman, entitled The Next Holocuast. It’s on the site’s front page, and can be read once, but is on a “read...
Independent, but idiotic
Harry's Place (dead link; the blog was cracked very shortly after I posted this) drew my attention to a bizarrely stupid side column to a profile of Muriel Degaque, the Belgian convert to Islam...
Niqabs and hoodies
The London Evening Standard today printed a letter from one Papya Qureshi of west London, a Bengali Muslima "who has been taught to dress modestly": I have lost track of the names of clothes...
Ethnic minorities and the environment
The Society Guardian, a supplement to the London Guardian, yesterday published two features on ethnic minority participation, and specifically Muslim participation, in environmental campaigns and in rural activities. Cause for all cultures explores why...
UZ on Arab liquor stores
Further to her earlier post about the torchings in California of Arab-run general stores which sell booze, she has a lengthy post, Pops, focusing on one particular Arab booze dealer in New Jersey, his...
Abu Sinan on perceptions of converts
Abu Sinan's blog has an article on how converts are perceived and the continual "wannabe" tag which is applied to them/us in certain places: You get the Christians or Jews who are scared and...
Black Iris on “Takfiri culture”
A Jordanian-based blog called The Black Iris of Jordan has published a lengthy article called Confronting the Takfiri Culture, explaining exactly what this term means to Muslims and why it is such a heinous...