Videos from the Palestine rally
I shot a few videos with my new camcorder at the rally for Palestine yesterday. Besides wanting to do this for its own sake as the first serious usage of my new toy, I...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Exciting times to be out of a job
Train company is to cut 300 jobs Southeastern trains [which operates trains in south-east London and Kent] is to make 300 people redundant over the coming year. The company blamed "reduced passenger journey growth"...
British welfare laws and foreign competitors
On Tuesday, the Guardian printed a lengthy article about welfare standards – or lack of them – on pig farms on the Continent (Europe). Now, as Muslims we may not be too fond of...
Study Islam, become an atheist?
Douglas Murray has an article in the latest edition of the Spectator (which at least had an edition last week, unlike the New Statesman which insisted that we make do with one edition for...
Muslims and Neturei Karta
Reading Mas’ud Khan’s account of his recent exchange with Melanie Phillips ([1], [2], [3]), I noticed that he had mentioned Neturei Karta to her, asking her whether she regarded them as “self-hating Jews”. NK,...
Motorbikes in bus lanes: where’s the beef?
Today an experimental scheme comes into operation in London, allowing motorcyclists to use bus lanes on “red routes” (main roads with stopping restrictions for all or part of the day). They have been allowed...
End of the long party
Now that it’s the evening of New Year’s Day, and the holiday season will be over in a few hours (even if it’s still the school holidays and a few people will be taking...
Let US clear up Guantanamo mess
Some sense from a columnist at the Times, no less: it was the USA who rounded up men too casually in their "war on terror", and it is they who should take in the...
Where I’ve been
I’ve been either ill or busy the past week. Before and after last week I had a job which required 12 and a half hour average days, then I went down with flu and...
Brass Crescent appreciation
I'd just like to say a huge thank you and jazakum Allah khair to all those who voted for me in the recent Brass Crescent awards. This blog won in the Best European blog...
A matter of dignity
On Thursday, there were reports about a woman who had taken her former employer, a bar in Mayfair, London, to court for supposedly sacking her for refusing to wear their staff uniform, a short...
Turning back the clock on Muslim history
Criticism of the Ottoman Sultans | Global Intifada Jinnzaman has an interesting feature on scholarly criticism of the Ottoman empire, which was not as simplistic as some Muslims portray it, by calling all of...
Why “Rights & Responsibilities” is bunk
Marcel Berlins: Rights and responsibilities bill is all wrong (from the Guardian) Marcel Berlins in today's Guardian on one big flaw in the proposed "charter of rights and responsibilities": Adding responsibilities to rights will...
Who are you calling work-shy?
Now that the boom years are over and thousands of people are losing their jobs, the government announces more restrictions on people claiming unemployment benefits, with accompanying cheerleading in the popular press which print...
Review: Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Technorati Tags: ben goldacre, bad science Ben Goldacre is a doctor who writes a column called Bad Science in the Guardian every Saturday, and has also got a blog by the same title as...
Who doesn’t deserve a funeral?
Harry’s Place » A Single Step The above post at Harry's Place is by the infamous Shiraz Maher (this is the guy who says he got involved in Islamism after 9/11 and changed his...
Bombay attacks may have been by Mafia
Misha Glenny, a noted author of books on the underworld, suggests that the Bombay-Karachi mafia known as "D-Company" may have been involved in last week's attacks, as they were in earlier bombings. The "kingpin"...
Bombay revisisted
So, it seems a lot of Muslims disagree with me and Umar over the perceived need to condemn the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay. Amad at Muslim matters was one of the first Muslims...
Western Muslims should not condemn Bombay attacks
A list of reasons why American Muslims should not fall over themselves to condemn the terrorist attacks in Bombay (I refuse to use the name Mumbai; although it is correct in two of the three local languages, this blog is in English, not Marathi or Gujarati, and I refuse to honour a Hindu nationalist renaming), and I think much the same applies to other western Muslims.
Ed Stourton: Anti-PC gone mad
Edward Stourton (of BBC Radio 4) in the Catholic Herald, on myths about "political correctness" commonly parroted in the British media, such as the "Winterval" event which supposedly replaced Christmas in Birmingham (the full...