What comes of starting Ramadan too early …
OK, OK, so some people may have less sympathetic assessments of this excuse for a poem at Muslim Wake Up: Ramadan is an annoying guest who comes too often and stays too long (Him...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
My Seven Things
OK, well, this is the second time I think that I've been tagged for the "seven things" meme – first it was by Safiyyah and this time it's by Izzy Mo [1], [2]. Since...
Wednesday Ramadan
Given the flood of “major” mosques which have declared that Ramadan is tomorrow on the basis of dubious “sightings” in Saudi Arabia, I’ve collated a list of places where people are starting on Wednesday....
New edition of Dala’il al-Khairaat
A new edition of the Islamic classic Dalaa’il al-Khairaat has been published, with a beautiful MP3 of the text’s recitation (via Seeker’s Digest). The page (the default page just contains a picture of the...
Who made the Barbarians pirates?
Anyone who saw Melanie Phillips’ recent piece on Britain’s campaign against the Barbary pirates and their kidnappings off the Cornish coast might like to read this article on the English role in introducing piracy...
Playing With Fire reviewed
Playing With Fire is a play by David Edgar, best known for Destiny, a play about the National Front which was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1976 and was screened by...
Narcissism and the pro-war left
Via Crooked Timber, a classic example of the smears and jibes resorted to by pro-war leftists, in the Financial Times by John Lloyd. As revealed in the current New Statesman (here’s the article, but...
Mawlana Rumi defence
Via SunniPath via Sunni Sister, an article has been posted defending Mawlana Jalal al-Deen Rumi from both the attacks of sectarians and the “universal mystics” who seek to co-opt his writings. It shows him...
Expelled union official reinstated
Via Islamophobia Watch, Keith Shilson, who was expelled from Middlesex University (in London) for insisting on holding a “question time” with Hizbut-Tahrir on campus, has been reinstated, although HT remains banned on the campus....
New Labour’s Stalinist attitudes
OK … those of us who opposed the Iraq war are used to having mud thrown at us: pro-Saddam, unholy alliance, SWP front group, and so on. Now, look which party proposes security laws...
Pictures from the demo
OK … as promised, I’ve finally prepared, scaled and uploaded a few of the pictures I took at the demonstration last Saturday. I took a total of 220 photos, some of which are not...
The rape-as-jihad myth
Some folk reading this are going to start asking why I mention people like Robert Spencer so much on my blog. Well, if Spencer was some guy howling on the sidelines, like so many...
Faith schools: Ulster card played yet again
In the edition of the New Statesman before last (19th Sept 2005), Nick Cohen had an article published in which he questioned the religion and religiosity figures in the 2001 census and called for...
Palazzi reveals his disbelief
Massimo “Abdul-Hadi” Palazzi hasn’t been heard from much lately in the sections of the Internet I inhabit – a couple of years ago one of his minions was a persistent presence on one of...
Another anti-war demo
So, another anti-war demonstration is over. I attended today's event more to cover it than to take part in it, because I'm becoming rather cynical about the whole situation. I always thought the war...
Accessibility features for next version of Qt
My main programming interest is Qt, which is a programming toolkit which allows the same program to be deployed on the Mac, Windows, and X-Window systems such as exist on Linux and Solaris. One...
Bad names, bad kids
This is something I’d never have thought of myself, but having read it, I sort of wonder why I never thought of it. The BBC reports that teachers think they can tell which kids...
It’s safe to protest tomorrow
I’ve just been looking at the list of speakers at the rally tomorrow in London (12 noon at Parliament Square), and there’s a refreshing lack of Marxist sectarians (Lindsey German of SWP, John Rees...
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on arbitration
While we’re on the subject of people who pretend to be Muslims and presume their opinions on Muslims and Islam count, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has her take on the Ontario arbitration affair printed in today’s...
Butt out, Salman
While it’s still Wednesday, I thought I might point out an article in today’s Guardian, in which Giles Fraser advises Salman Rushdie to quit his “crusading” (wrong word, but still …) and concentrate on...