Perusing Amardeep Singh’s superb weblog, I found this write-up of a moving and illuminating essay posted on the Kafila blog by the writer and activist, Mahmood Farooqui - Walled away in faith’s defence.
Farooqui writes about a number of intertwining paradoxes: a secular, atheist Muslim living in a conservative Muslim mohalla (neighbourhood) of Delhi, the problem […]
Ali Eteraz is “severely hurt” by Western Muslim attitudes to Iraqi insurgency. Best let him explain his pain himself, from a post entitled Western Muslim Opinion On The War in Iraq:
I have to say, I am severely hurt by what Islam has become in Iraq. In fact, to say that this blatant murdering of civilians […]
The Observer has delivered, it likes to think, a scoop: The prominent (read - ‘on the telly often’) Islamist Asghar Bukhari, founder of MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committe AKA mpacUK), and high-profile Media-endorsed “Muslim spokesman” has admitted donating money to David Irving, Holocaust revisionist and convicted historian.
MPAC identifies itself as part of the British […]
In addition to “Banker to the Poor” and “Nobel Laureate”, Prof Yunus has collected yet another honorific to his name; this time he’s the “Enemy of Islam”. Besides this the Nobel Peace thingy pales in comparison. Time to break out the mishti.
Bequeathing this title to the Grameen Bank founder is Fazlul Haque Amini MP, one […]
Theo Hobson, a man who wears a formidable mustache, comments on a religious/political quandrary on CiF: How can Britain assert secular liberal values against the threat of Islamic extremism when it isn’t a secular state itself. The point of Hobson’s article, which he goes on to make rather well, is that in order to remove […]
A few thoughts on the burkha issue which has become animated all over again thanks to comments made by Jack Straw.
Straw’s comments seems to have raised the blood pressure of many Muslims which is somewhat hypocritical (but not wholly unexpected) since the burkha converstaion has been in currency in Muslim societies for generations. But then […]
The constant curtailment of freedom of speech and expression by reactionaries is doing all Muslims a serious disservice. The fear of offending is almost becoming offensive in itself. There is a growing intolerance of the sensitivities of the communities and its peoples. Put simply, it can’t go on. This doesn’t mean the individuals deserve attack […]
On Thursday the Home Secretary John Reid visits Leytonstone (in east London) to deliver a speech at a Muslim outreach program. He gets heckled by an “angry and maladroit” Muslim man who then gets bustled out. For the rest of the day all I see on the major news networks (BBC, ITN, SKY etc) is […]
Set up to counter the ‘moderates’ of the MCB (cue laughtrack), the Sufi Muslim Council (SMC) seems to have attracted tepid interest from the Muslim community. This limited interest in the new political outfit is already the subject of an HT-style dissembling campaign.
A SMC-watch type blog (The Sufi Muslim Council Exposed) has been set […]
On Friday (8.30pm), George Galloway MP appeared on a live phone-in discussion on BanglaTV (Sky Channel 781), which had been convened to discuss the “removal” of Delwar Hossein Sayeedi from Britain the previous week. Now whether Sayeedi was kicked out of the UK with the help of ‘Home Office intervention’ or he skedaddled out […]