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A comment on a weblog regarding the current tendency for those opposed to Muslims to quote a piece of research which suggests that a quarter of us believe in conspiracy theories regarding the massacres on the London transport system in July 2005: redleader, Comment No. 626343, June 8 15:12, GBR EdmundWest, I agree that the [...]

As I was starting my four-day Project Management course today, I had to drive up to Winslow in north Buckinghamshire and thus caught more of BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme than I usually do. At 8.10am John Humpries interviewed an individual who was made famous by his intervention during Home Secretary, John Reid’s speech to [...]

Writing in The Guardian, Wednesday 16 August with a column entitled, The venomous media voices who think no Muslim is worth talking to I feel she makes some good points and has identified some real issues. It seems to me that she is one Commentator who has actually engaged with the British community and knows [...]

From The Times today: MI5 had built up a detailed picture of the plot over several months, but the threat had dramatically increased; the plotters had acquired the capability to carry out the attacks, perhaps within days. There was even a looming date, August 22, a holy day in the Muslim calendar and a propitious [...]

Who speaks for the Muslims? That’s the question being asked throughout the Media and all over the internet. Well certainly not the Media. But MCB? MAB? Our imams? I don’t know. Who speaks for me? Nobody speaks for me. This is the question on the tongues of the chattering classes, but I don’t think any [...]

Although Lesley White’s article focusing on the social life of the British Muslim community in this weekend’s Sunday Times was not particularly negative, it has irritated me. There seems to be an underlying assumption that the United Kingdom is defined by a monoculture, outside which lie the Muslims. It is not. I am a native [...]

I woke up late this morning, but now I’m up it seems like one of those Stupid News days. There was one of those debates about Islamic extremism and the moderates on the Radio 4′s Today programme on my way into work. Yahya Birt made a useful contribution, but the same could not be said [...]

Okay, so I am writing again already. Prompted by the first comment left by yet another “anonymous” under my last post, something needs to be said about media-induced distress. I cannot say that I have no sympathy for sufferers of this ailment; indeed it would be hypocritical for me to deny the anxiety stirring power [...]

I have never been a good Believer, neither as a Christian before those five years of agnosticism nor as a Muslim ever since. My faith has never been zealous; when I said I didn’t believe in God for a year or so around the age of fifteen even my atheism was agnostic. Nevertheless, however simple [...]

January ended with the news that a tanker loaded with ten thousand tonnes of phosphoric acid had sunk off the French coast, threatening to leak eighty tonnes of fuel oil into the English Channel. It had all the makings of a major news story. As the British Press focused on the House of Commons vote [...]

When I began writing several hours ago, having just turned off the Six O’Clock News in my car, I was pretty angry. I was foaming about the way Muslims have to react so stupidly every time a red flag is waved in front of us. Just after I became Muslim seven and a half years [...]

In general I enjoy listening to programmes on BBC Radio 4. I don’t own a TV and only buy a newspaper about twice a month (usually The Independent, for my sins), so the radio is my main source when keeping abreast of current affairs. A pretty good job it does too: not least Start the [...]