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...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
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...
Firefox 1.5 warning
Mozilla FireFox 1.5 has just been released, with a whole list of new features. Using it on my Mac it doesn't look any different, and they don't seem earth-shattering although they do include a...
Bomber’s sister a nasty piece of work, apparently
An update on my earlier entry on the brother and sister of Omar Sharif who attempted to blow up a pizza parlour in Tel Aviv; I suspected that people would find them guilty even...
Top cop does NOT want to ban water pistols
… but what he is saying actually doesn't make much sense either way. Yesterday, Michael Todd, Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police called on people not to buy toy guns for children this...
Zahid and Parveen Sharif acquitted
The BBC reported this afternoon that Zahid and Parveen Sharif, who were accused of knowing about their brother Omar's involvement in the Tel Aviv pizza-parlour bombings in 2003 and not saying anything, were acquitted...
The joys and hazards of the London truck driver
A couple of weeks ago I posted on a Jewish blog called Adloyada that I lose a lot of posts because they come to me while I’m working, and by the time I get...
Juan Cole on al-Jazira bombing plan
Juan Cole here comments on GW Bush's imbecilic idea of bombing al-Jazeera, which we are led to believe Saint Anthony Blair talked him out of. (Hat tip: Ginny. Update: Spectator editor Boris Johnson is...
Reply to Sookhdeo in the Spectator
The Spectator has finally published a reply to Patrick Sookhdeo's diatribe in the "Eurabia" issue two weeks ago. Headed "Eirenic Islam", it's not in the online edition, so here's an extract: I imagine many...
Director: Tamburlaine not censored
I'm not sure how many people saw the play or even heard about it (I didn't), but this past week there's been a big controversy over the "censorship" of the Christopher Marlowe play Tamburlaine....
Shock news: Arabs don’t wear poppies. Cabbie talks out of his backside.
Melanie Phillips today linked this tragi-comic piece of Front Page drivel, The First Step to Britishness Is Your Poppy. In it, Carol Gould describes how she was accosted by some idiot of Arab origin...
BBC caves in to complaints
The BBC reports that its governors have caved in to pressure from hundreds of "listeners" and found that a From Our Own Correspondent report on the final departure of Yasir Arafat from Ramallah breached...
Observer on niqab
The Observer had a story on the front page of its review section last Sunday on niqab, the face veil worn by some Muslim women. The Big Cover-Up fails to ask the obvious question...
Blognoramus!
I've decided to coin a new term: blognoramus. A blognoramus is not, of course, an ignoramus with a weblog. There are plenty of those around and nobody has seen fit to coin a special...