A senseless Eid scandal
To start off, now that it really is Eid and I've got the time and energy to type, Eid Mubarak everybody. Anyway … All this Ramadan, I've been working on the assumption that today...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
The recent Eagleton vs Amis affair
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink This is an article by Terry Eagleton, who has been involved in a public argument with the novelist...
Counter-reformation II
Ali Eteraz posted a reply to an article I posted last weekend, in reply to his three articles on Islamic reform and the alleged “counter-reformation” which has gained pace since 9/11. Here is my reply to parts of his reply.
Medical students: getting picky with the facts
Muslim medical students get picky – Times Online This is an attempt to incite hostility to Muslims, based on the reported actions of a handful of ill-advised Muslim medical students. By the way, read...
The other side of Burma’s “peaceful” monks
The other, invisible suffering of Burma « Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist In the recent rush to support the monk-led uprising against the military junta in Burma, the situation of the long-suffering Muslim minority,...
Response to Ali Eteraz on “Islamic reform”
Ali Eteraz has recently posted a series of articles on Comment is Free on what he calls "Islamic reform" ([1], [2], [3]). He defines Islamic reform as what happens when "a Muslim dissents from...
Shiraz Maher fails to prove his point (again)
Last night, Shiraz Maher, a friend of Ed Husain's who was also a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in England (much more recently), fronted a BBC Panorama documentary entitled "How I Became a Muslim Extremist". He...
Response to Sayeeda Warsi on the BNP
Pickled Politics: Sayeeda Warsi and the BNP I thought someone would write a cogent reply to Sayeeda Warsi's interview in yesterday's Independent on Sunday, in which she claimed that the BNP have some legitimate...
The woman detained for decades for stealing £5
Earlier this week several newspapers, and the BBC, carried this story about an old woman who was detained in a mental hospital, aged 15, in 1937, after being wrongly accused of stealing a sum...
The futility of terrorism
Some guy has just been convicted of sending letter bombs (also here) to various companies which were involved in security and surveillance, and to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), citing an "overbearing...
Dentists as moral arbiters
The BBC yesterday reported that a Muslim dentist in Bury, near Manchester, has been brought before a disciplinary tribunal accused of demanding that a Muslim woman wear a hijab to his practice if she...
Nick Cohen on Saudi money power
Nick Cohen, in last Sunday’s Observer, posted an extraordinarily conspiracy-minded article about the Saudis’ financial muscle supposedly inhibits any investigation into their activities in the UK. He starts off on the subject of the...
Libel law censorship
Yesterday, several British political blogs were pulled down, including Bloggerheads, that of the former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, Bob Piper and Boris Johnson, when their web host gave in to threatening letters from lawyers acting for the Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is trying to buy Arsenal football club. The threats were in response to allegations posted on Murray’s blog, which were reproduced here among other places. I can’t testify that what Murray says is true, of course, but Murray himself says has not received any correspondence from Usmanov’s lawyers. They have gone for the easy option of simply censoring his claims by leaning on his web hosts. (The whole article is still available at Indymedia.)
Internet temptation?
BBC NEWS: Job losses over eBay ‘addiction’ A council in south Wales has fired nine of its staff for spending “up to two hours per day” on eBay. The council has a policy of...
Amnesty mission creep and Catholic schools
Guardian Unlimited: Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here’s why This is a reaction by a feminist to the decision by the Catholic church in Ireland to tell schools to shut down their...
Apostacy: no holy nor unholy war
Last night, Channel 4 broadcast a Dispatches documentary on the plight of former Muslims who convert to Christianity in the UK. The programme was entitled, of all things, Unholy War, and was "trailered" by...
The injustice of “A Mighty Heart”
New Statesman – Through western eyes This is a review written by Ananya Vajpeyi, an Indian Hindu woman who was a friend of Daniel Pearl, of the film about Pearl’s murder in 2002. She...
“Israel lobby” book is out
The book version of Mearsheimer & Walt's The Israel Lobby is now out in the UK (I got it for £22 in Blackwell's in Charing Cross Road; Borders didn't have it at all, several...
Doubts over OBL video
I just managed to watch a clip of the recent Osama bin Laden video on YouTube, and saw for myself what this blogger points out: that the video is frozen shortly before the 2-minute...
The threat to ruin Damascus
A new edition of Islamica Magazine is on the shelves in London now (try Borders) and there's a disturbing article about a plan to demolish large areas of the old city of Damascus involving...