UK motorway services “worst in Europe”
As a truck driver I regularly have to experience the joys of using Britain’s motorway service stations, particularly of course those around London. Now the AA has said ours are Europe’s worst, and they...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Today’s Wrox event
This evening Foyle’s Bookshop in London held a “networking event” featuring a number of people from the Wrox publishing company and its new owners, Wiley. I had meetings with some of the representatives as...
Alert on map thefts
s a graduate of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, who made much use of the National Library of Wales, I’d like to help publicise the appeal for the capture of a serial map...
Crossing Continents – Training of Imams
Crossing Continents, a current affairs programme broadcast on Radio 4, is discussing (as I type!) the subject of training imams in Europe. The government of the Netherlands has recently passed laws demanding that foreign...
Free publicity for the “Teen Gulag”
I’m not sure why I’ve held up posting on this issue for so long, but a few months ago the BBC ran a series of features on a girl from England who was tricked...
Our rulers are scared of us
The Observer reports that the British authorities are seriously considering sealing off an area around the Houses of Parliament. Anyone who has been to the area knows that Parliament lies right next to a...
An Insight into the Jama’at of Slanderers
I did a Google search for Muhammad Shareef yesterday, for reasons I can’t quite remember. One of the first things it came up with was this discussion on SalafiTalk.net which really demonstrates what an...
Denis MacEoin’s at it again!
It seems that every time there is a debate about the right of Muslim girls to wear headscarves to school, a guy called Denis MacEoin from Newcastle on Tyne gets his two pennies or...
Wimbledon to use Linux
The BBC reports that the Wimbledon tennis championship is to use Linux for both its public website and its internal “intranet”. (I don’t watch the tennis, but it’s good to hear that such a...
UK sending refugees back to Somali war zone
The Guardian reports that the British government has been quietly sending refugees back to a known war zone – Mogadishu in Somalia, to an ex-Soviet air base controlled by clan militias. (This is after...
Dickinson murder and other stuff in the news
Much column inches were taken up today by the verdict on Francisco Arce Montes, concerning the dreadful murder of Caroline Dickinson, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who was on a school trip to Brittany. It turns...
Decent article on Wahhabi threat
William Dalrymple (of White Mughals fame) has contributed a piece to today’s Guardian, “Saudi Arabia created the monster now devouring it”. It gives the usual account of the fitna caused by Wahhabi missionaries, and...
Reflections on Respect and the recent elections
I wasn’t able to blog the last few days, because of long work hours and being too tired yesterday (after a run to Milton Keynes on Friday evening, not getting back until after 11pm,...
Come on England! (Oh, all right then …)
I was thoroughly glad to find a piece in the Guardian which told us it was OK to be indifferent as to whether “our boys” win the European championship this month or not. ‘It’s...
New Muslim centre in East London
The East London Mosque (one of the few mosques in London which is able to give the adhan over the loudspeaker) has just opened its new extension, which can hold 10,000 worshippers and has...
The Secular Case for Home Schooling
A topic close to my heart even though I’m not (yet, insha Allah) a parent: The Secular Case for Home Schooling by Diana West (never heard of this journo before, my apologies if she...
I’m really annoyed tonight
I’ve just come back from a Respect rally at Friends’ House (a Quaker building) near Euston station in Central London. The speakers were George Galloway (of course), Yvonne Ridley, Anas Altikriti, Anjum Mirza of...
Fatwas on voting
In response to the allegations of “kufr akbar” against anyone voting in the coming elections, I found two pages containing the opinions of various Islamic scholars on voting at the IACN web site in...
More on the BNP danger
Black Information Link have published this article on tactics the BNP are using to up their share of the vote in the opinion polls in the run-up to this Thursday’s elections. They have also...
Inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raji’oon …
News has reached us that Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Shaghouri, a major shaikh of Damascus, has passed away. Besides being a shaikh of ‘aqida and fiqh, he was also a renowned Sufi shaikh and was the...