We don’t need a Gandhi
The Daily Telegraph last Saturday published a piece by Charles Moore, Where is the Gandhi of Islam?, containing an awful lot of waffle and a few plainly false assertions. The article basically casts doubt...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Further thoughts on yesterday’s bombings
It’s the end of the day after London’s first experience of al-Qa’ida-style terrorism; the death toll continues to rise (although they do not believe it will reach 100), and the media is full of...
I am still here
Alhamdu lillah, I’m still around. Thanks to all the people who wrote to me and commented here to check whether I was safe after this morning’s bombings in London. I actually had a rather...
What does Islam really say about rape?
When I did the feature two days ago on the way various societies, including Muslim societies, oppress women, I had intended to include a section on what certain writers have been saying about the...
London 2013: Pay the Bill!
So, London has finally won the 2012 Olympic bid. I’m blogging in the London Apple Store, having come here from Trafalgar Square. The result was announced just before 12:50 London time, and I arrived...
In defence of English food
I write this on the eve of the day on which we Londoners find out whether we are to be saddled with a bill which will take generations to pay off, or to sit...
The media, women’s oppression and reality
This is going to be a long and rambling post, but it was inspired by a number of blog pieces I read, an article I read in the London Guardian newspaper, and a programme...
Shell skills for bloggers
Recently I helped someone with troubles they’d been having setting up WordPress using their blog host’s Control Panel tools. Of course, graphical user interface file transfer and management tools are always different, so for...
The price of being an upstanding citizen
Today I learned that in the near future I might be up for what I consider a pretty unreasonable fine or a legal battle. All for talking to a policeman by the side of...
LugRadio live
I was really quite excited about yesterday’s LugRadio Live event in Wolverhampton. LugRadio is a fortnightly “radio” show (i.e. downloadable recorded show) produced by the Wolverhampton Linux User Group led by Jono Bacon, a...
You know you’re a Londoner when …
You read Blogthings’ “You Know You’re From London when …” and realise it wasn’t written by a Londoner. Actually, I suspect UZ’s You Know You’re From New York when … was not written by...
No thanks to you, Mrs Robinson
I can’t think of a better title for a post about the case of a young female teacher found guilty yesterday of seducing an even younger pupil at her school, but I thought it...
Dumbing down English grammar
Earlier this year I bought the CD by Lynne Truss, Cutting a Dash, a BBC Radio 4 series on which Eats, Shoots and Leaves was based. The first episode was about the apostrophe, a...
Stories which caught my eye today
First of all, this whole smoking thing. There’s been yet more talk of having a ban on smoking in public places, and usual some people are up in arms about it. I say go...
Girl sues over boarding school pregnancy
There’s a report here about a girl who was sent to a special-needs boarding school ended up pregnant after being placed in a room next door to a 16-year-old boy. The report does not...
US govt slanders Tablighi Jama’at
The New York Times has published the story of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany who was arrested in Pakistan not long after the 9/11 attacks, and handed over to the Americans...
Some impressions on SUSE Linux 9.3
SUSE Professional Linux 9.3 is the first Linux package I’ve actually bought (as opposed to getting it on a magazine cover disk) since version 9.1 last May. I’ve actually bought all of SUSE’s releases...
Moving to WordPress
I’ve had a request from a fellow Muslim blogger for information about what is required in transferring from Blogger to WordPress. My main blog hasn’t been based on Blogger for more than a year,...
New kangaroo court outrage
Ginny mentioned a report about yet another incident involving the oppression of a Muslim woman by a kangaroo court full of ignorant local elders, this time in India. The local assembly demanded that a...
Spectator on low-level sexual abuse
There’s a feature in this week’s Spectator (a right-of-centre political magazine) by one Leo McKinstry about the sexual advances he received from various men at his boarding school in Northern Ireland and how it...