The hidden dangers of a ban on fascists in unions
Tomorrow, the UK House of Commons is to vote on an amendment to the employment bill, restoring the right of trade unions to refuse to admit, or to expel, British National Party members (more...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Stupidity and religion (2)
Nick Cohen has a column in today's Observer, in which he goes from the tendency of American conservative Evangelicals away from the Republicans, featuring one Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals who...
Religion, evolution and stupidity
George Monbiot, in the Guardian last Tuesday, on the link between religious belief and the anti-intellectualisation of US politics: Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is...
Blogging the Westfield
Over the Summer and early Autumn (i.e. Ramadan), I had a lot of work delivering electrical supplies to shopfitters working in the new Westfield centre, and spent many an hour sitting on the ramps...
When the medium is The Message
It has been reported that The Message, a film about the arrival of Islam which featured Anthony Quinn in the original, is being remade, this time with Muslim actors and set around Makkah and...
What is behind Stephen “Suleyman” Schwartz’s hateful rants?
The other day I wrote an article in response to one in the Sunday Telegraph of 19th October, quoting at length an official in the Church of England from Bradford who claimed that the...
Unity but not much peace at ExCeL
I managed to get to Global Peace and Unity 2008 this year, for the first time since 2006 (and that, like this time, was because I managed to blag a free ticket off another...
ENGAGE goes live; invitation for contributors
For anyone – particularly here in the UK – who’s depressed about losing three great blogs in as many weeks, ENGAGE, a new Muslim organisation dedicated to media monitoring and encouraging political participation, has...
Why I still haven’t replaced my Mac
AppleInsider | Steve Jobs on Apple's cash, NetBooks, Apple TV, and cheap PCs A couple of years ago I wrote this, a reply to a series of articles on OSNews on why the author...
Muslim review of “Jewel of Medina”
BBC NEWS: When Islam meets Bridget Jones This is a review by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, the author of the Spirit21 blog (you can also find the review there). She concludes that the book is...
Tablighis: engaging in Bradford, isolating in London – or is it just a misunderstanding?
Olympic mosque could create breeding ground for extremists, says senior Anglican – Telegraph This was in yesterday's Telegraph, and it surprised me how many specific falsehoods and irrelevances could be crammed into one article....
Amina Wadud joins Hargey publicity stunt
Three years after the “Historic Jumah” in which a small number of people in New York did an invalid “Friday prayer” at a church in New York, Amina Wadud turns up in Oxford to...
Daily Express fined for printing garbage
The Daily Express group has been ordered to pay £375,000 to seven friends of the McCann family, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in May 2007 and has not been seen since, for...
Panorama’s narrow view on Palin
Last Monday, BBC broadcast a Panorama programme, Obama and the Pitbull: An American Tale (requires Flash), about what you’d think were the two Presidential candidates (McCain himself hardly gets a mention). Watching the trailers,...
Photos from Eid in the Square
Last Saturday, I attended the Eid in the Square, Trafalgar Square in London to be precise. I caught only the last half of it, which meant two different “nasheed” groups and one guy who...
Haider was speeding, and other news from the criminal far right
BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Haider ‘was double speed limit’ Jörg Haider, the former leader of the so-called Freedom Party in Austria who died in a car crash on Saturday morning, was...
C++: the Ugly Useful Programming Language
Eric Raymond, author of the [Computer] Jargon File, The Cathedral and The Bazaar and a number of well-used but little-known pieces of software, is working on a book, putatively titled Why C++ Is Not Our Favorite Programming Language. In his recent announcement, he lays out why he wants to “harpoon the Great White Whale of programming languages”. I will lay out why it remains mine, and more to the point, why it endures despite the existence of alternatives such as Java.
The importance of religious over ethnic solidarity
Last week, the New Statesman printed a letter from Randhir Singh Bains of Essex, whose letters commonly appear in the centre-left press in the UK, about the history of inter-Asian solidarity in the UK:...
Pictures from Brighton and Lewes
Misty Sussex countryside, originally uploaded by Indigo Jo. Here are a few pictures I took on a day trip down to the South Coast yesterday. I had booked a day rail pass having read...
Ian Blair: good riddance, but …
Last week, Ian Blair, the London Police commissioner, finally resigned. I must say I am glad to see him go, and I was disgusted that the killing of Jean-Charles de Menezes did not result...