Robert Spencer, Patrick Sookhdeo and me
It seems I’ve been getting a lot of referrals from the ghosts of the American right-wing Islamophobic blogosphere lately, as shown in my Incoming Links on my control panel. They all had to do...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Harassment “commonplace” for those with learning disabilities
Last Wednesday in Manchester, a 64-year-old man with learning disabilities, David Askew, collapsed and died after two youths broke down his garden gate and tampered with his mother’s scooter. He had not been physically...
Niqaab and rickets in the UK
Today I found a post at the blog The Answer’s 42 alleging that the so-called burqa was to blame for the increased incidence of vitamin D deficiency in Asian women in the UK and...
Why get sanctimonious about Tantawi?
About 24 hours ago, Muhammad Tantawi, the shaikh of al-Azhar in Cairo, died of a heart attack at Riyadh airport. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. Formalities over …
Erwin James on the Angola Three
37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three | Society | The Guardian I had heard of the Angola Three before today, but this article puts the whole case into very clear detail for...
Why I still blog
Last week, Umar Lee posted his parting message to the Muslim blogging community, after his blog had been offline for some weeks. His reasoning was twofold: one is that all the best blogs (Sunni...
Tory think tank compared to “madrasa”
Today the Guardian carried a front-page story about how various Tory MPs and activists are being given training by an offshoot of the party’s youth wing, Conservative Future, named the Young Britons’ Foundation ([1],...
Old wounds opened by Venables re-arrest
One of the two men who were convicted of the murder of James Bulger as boys was recalled to prison about a week ago, something the public found out yesterday and was all over...
Ricky Gervais on ME, and other bad comedy
Yesterday I had a brief exchange of tweets with Organica, who told me of her enthusiasm for the British comedian, Ricky Gervais, best known for writing and starring in The Office, his stand-up shows,...
London minicabs and public service ads
A few months ago, Transport for London published a set of advertisements aimed at encouraging people, particularly women, not to take the unlicensed “minicabs” which attempt to pick up passengers by the side of...
Qadri’s fatwa breaks no new ground
The London Evening Standard yesterday had a two-page feature on a forthcoming fatwa by the leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran group, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, which unequivocally condemns suicide bombings. The feature is dominated by a...
Sportsmen as paragons of virtue
I heard the public apology by Tiger Woods last Friday on the BBC London evening news show, and was kind of satisfied when fate had me go through a long stretch of tunnel during...
Heathrow robbery trial bungled again
BBC News – Heathrow armed robbery accused on run from London court Today a guy who was on trial for an armed robbery at Heathrow airport in 2004 jumped bail after having left the...
“Hijab gates” bring out the bigots
Various newspapers have reported that two sculptures to be erected at both ends of Brick Lane in east London, a narrow street which has become a trendy hang-out place and which is supposedly full...
Gilderdale, Schiavo and models of disability
The other day I had a debate with Clair Lewis, a British disability activist and blogger, about the public reaction to the Kay Gilderdale case. Lewis was appalled by the show of public sympathy...
Attempt to link Islamic societies to terrorism
Last Thursday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a Report programme in which they attempted to “investigate” the links between British university Islamic societies (or ISocs) with terrorism, on the basis that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalib, who...
The real value of online friendships (Hadley Freeman revisited)
At the end of December there was an article by Hadley Freeman in the Guardian, characterising the past decade as a decade of fakery: fake science, fake politics and fake friendships connected only by...
The nasty party begins to re-emerge
In 2002 Teresa May, the chairwoman of the Tory party appointed by Iain Duncan Smith, told the party’s conference that people called her party the “nasty party” and that their base was too narrow...
Early 1990s Kilroy flashback
Does anyone remember what Robert Kilroy-Silk was like before he wrote that column in the Daily Express — AKA Daily Spew — saying that the West owes Muslims nothing, being as we are all...
Panorama and other media coverage of the Gilderdale affair
I’ve been following the media coverage of the Lynn Gilderdale attempted murder trial with some interest as I found it quite emotionally affecting, and have found most of the coverage to be sympathetic to...