{"id":1448,"date":"2004-06-13T09:06:56","date_gmt":"2004-06-13T08:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2004\/06\/13\/come_on_england_oh_all_right_then"},"modified":"2004-06-13T09:06:56","modified_gmt":"2004-06-13T08:06:56","slug":"come_on_england_oh_all_right_then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2004\/06\/13\/come_on_england_oh_all_right_then","title":{"rendered":"Come on England! (Oh, all right then …)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was thoroughly glad to find a piece in the Guardian which told us it was OK to be indifferent as to whether “our boys” win the European championship this month or not. ‘It’s not that I don’t want “our boys” to win. It’s just that I don’t really care if they lose’, he says here<\/a>, calling the team “without doubt, the most uninspiring set of dullards ever to pull a white shirt over their heads”.
\n
\nI have posted this because the other day Jon Gaunt, BBC London’s morning talk show presenter, was insisting that everyone, regardless of his religion, wrap himself in the St. George’s flag in order to support the “boys”. The “regardless of his religion” bit is what I am drawing attention to, because as Muslims we simply cannot use a flag with a cross on it – it represents all the falsehoods our religion frees us from, and may also have unpleasant Crusader connections. It’s rather sad to hear that some Muslims have been flying this flag, not realising (one assumes) that it is a flag of kufr<\/i>. (Quite apart from the fact that watching these games means watching men run around not properly dressed, and what’s the point in supporting the team if you can’t watch them?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was thoroughly glad to find a piece in the Guardian which told us it was OK to be indifferent as to whether “our boys” win the European championship this month or not. ‘It’s...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-nm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}