Politics, tech and media issues from a Muslim perspective
New Statesman – Fundamental change This week's New Statesman has a feature on resurgent religion, particularly evangelical Anglicanism but also Catholicism, including a lengthy interview with the Bishop of Durham. The article I've featured...
So, the Olympic torch has made its brief visit to London over the weekend, with a trip across London from west (Wembley) to east (Stratford, where it passed by the 2012 building site) and...
BBC NEWS: Princess Diana unlawfully killed An inquest jury in London has found that the late Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, and her lover Emad “Dodi” Fayed, son of Mohamed al-Fayed, was unlawfully killed...
Well, it doesn't snow that often in England anyway, but snow in April is really unusual (though I've witnessed snow in Spring in the past, in the early 1990s when I was at boarding...
Apparently, according to some French writers, not much – according to this article, very few modern French writers use it, and the decline in its use is due to the invasion of British usages...
The last couple of weeks there has been a controversy over a new book being co-written by Hassan Butt, former al-Muhajiroun activist and self-proclaimed terrorist fixer and fundraiser, and the British writer and "journalist"...
The Guardian: Less Cookson, more Ali: Tyneside town finds hidden Muslim history The Guardian today printed this feature on the history of South Shields, a town in the conurbation of Newcastle in England, which...
I've watched Geert Wilders's new film Fitna. I am sure nobody expects a good write-up of it from me, but it's a really poor piece of film. (More: HAhmed, Austrolabe, reproduced at Muslim Matters,...
Five Chinese Crackers covers the tabloid response to the recent NUT faith education proposal. I did start writing a piece after reading the Guardian's write-up of it, by which account it seems to be...
Today's Sun (Murdoch-owned London tabloid) led with a front-page story about something Omar Bakri said about Amir Khan. Omar Bakri is the former leader of the disbanded al-Muhajiroun, who ran noisy demonstrations and street-corner...
Over the weekend the government announced that it was considering banning the open display of cigarettes for sale, as is commonly found in any tobacco shop, whether a local corner shop or a supermarket....
Charles Moore, well-known writer for the Telegraph and Spectator and known among us for articles like this one from 2005, calling for the Muslims to bring forward a Gandhi (my response here), gave a...
It was reported today that a paedophile who was taken to Australia at the age of five (he is 61 now) has been deported back to England. He is not by any means the...
British Muslim Initiative: The Sun and Daily Mail withdraw unfounded allegations by Policy Exchange Hot on the heels of the Daily Spew grovelling to the McCanns yesterday, the Sun and the Daily Mail (or...
The Daily Spew and Black Hole today printed front-page apologies to Gerry and Kate McCann, whose daugher Madeleine went missing in Portugal last year, for printing false and defamatory stories about them on numerous...
Comment is free: Hygiene obsession Katherine Ashenburg (author of a forthcoming book, Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing) on American toilets (sorry, bathrooms) and the various methods deployed to prevent people getting their hands...
Ed Husain showed up again in last Sunday’s Observer (which I have finally got round to blogging after three days of early starts and long driving shifts), blowing the trumpet for an Egyptian preacher...
From the Guardian: a letter and an article about Stonehenge I’m sure you’ve all heard of Stonehenge – a ring of ancient standing stones, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, which you see by...
BBC News report on abuse of soldiers This morning, the BBC made a big fuss of a report about incidents of verbal of abuse of air force servicemen in Peterborough by people opposed to...
Over the past couple of weeks, a scandal has emerged of a serious culture of child abuse at a major children's home on Jersey, Haut de la Garenne, which was closed several years ago...