Why long-distance day trips are a bad thing
Recently three people I know visited Cairo. One of them, a Muslim of Somali origin who lives in Canada, spent two weeks there on the way to Dubai and Somalia; the other two, both...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
Marriage contract issue on BBC’s “Sunday”
Radio 4’s programme Sunday, its weekly religious affairs programme broadcast at 7am on Sunday mornings, today featured the “Islamic” marriage contract issue. You can listen to it here until next Sunday when the next...
MI5: there is no terrorist profile
The Guardian today published a lengthy article about an MI5 report they had obtained (which was restricted), which stated that there was no real profile which could indicate what sort of young Muslim would...
Exploring the “Islamic” marriage contract
The so-called Islamic marriage contract recently proposed by the Muslim Institute has attracted a lot of attention in the Muslim blogosphere lately, much of it negative, for reasons anyone who has read it will...
Imam’s response to the “Islamic” marriage contract
Haitham al-Haddad (a "salafi" imam based, if I remember rightly, at al-Muntada al-Islami in west London) has given a lengthy response to the recent "Islamic" marriage contract published by the Ghayasuddin Siddiqui front organisation,...
Change of scenery
As you can see, I have changed the theme for this blog. I had not intended to do this when I upgraded my Movable Type installation last week, but the old templates did not...
Who are the real traitors?
Recently I had an exchange with an old school acquaintance who accused me of defending an enemy of my country, namely Abu Hamza, on my blog. Abu Hamza is currently in jail, having served...
Move ’em down south? Hardly
Yesterday, the Policy Exchange published a report which suggested that the government should stop trying to revive the north, and instead build lots of new houses around London, Oxford and Cambridge and encourage ambitious...
Khalifites at the New Statesman
The Khalifites are, thankfully, a group one does not encounter often as a Muslim these days, but they seem to come in waves when they appear. In the mid-1990s, during the heyday of the...
Zia: Let Muslims run their own committee
Ziauddin Sardar, in the current New Statesman, has a worthwhile argument about some recent government idea to "set up a board of Muslim theologians" in order to "steer the more radical elements of the...
The descendants of Nazis who became Jews
The Guardian today had this feature on descendants of Nazis, including a shirt-tail relative of Adolf Hitler, who became Jews, and in one case a rabbi, supposedly to cleanse themselves of the sins of...
But freedom for whom?
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a confused ramble in today's Independent, lamenting the fact that joining the European Union has decreased in popularity since 2002, when the figure was 70% in favour (by 2006, it was...
A good ruling on the Sikh kara
Last Tuesday a British court upheld the right of a Sikh girl living in south Wales to wear the kara, or Sikh bangle, to school. Her school, Aberdare Girls', bars all religious symbols and...
Who are the real “New Jews”?
Douglas Murray on Islamophobia in Standpoint Standpoint magazine is a recently-launched magazine published by the Social Affairs Unit, and appears to be an attempt at a serious political and cultural magazine for the centre...
Muslim students: joint statement issued
Following last Sunday's report (PDF) by the "Centre for Social Cohesion" (in reality, a right-wing think tank largely geared towards raising suspicion about Muslims) alleging that a large proportion of Muslim students support killing...
Too busy to fix an ongoing crime
Yesterday, with the water off in my part of town because of a burst water main in Wimbledon (which flooded not only the street but also South Wimbledon tube station), I headed up London...
Why I welcome the Mosley privacy ruling
Technorati Tags: max mosley Yesterday Max Mosley, the president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), which manages Formula 1 racing, won £60,000 from the News of the World which printed a story about his...
Ed stifling debate again
Technorati Tags: ed husain, islam channel Azad Ali at Islamic Forum Europe on yet another example of Ed Husain dictating to the media, and to various Islamic organisations, as to who he will and...
LugRadio Live 2008 reviewed
LugRadio Live 2008 pictures Last Saturday I went to what was billed as the last ever LugRadio performance. LugRadio is (or rather was) a podcast produced by the Wolverhampton Linux Users’ Group, and since...
Channel 4’s “The Qur’an” Reviewed
Last week, Channel 4 broadcast a film by Antony Thomas (of Death of a Princess fame) called The Qur'an (see it here), which attempted to explore "what the Qur'an actually says". Karima Hamdan has...