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 …
What on earth have the Israelis been fighting for? I have just had the misfortune to encounter a three metre high Think Israel tourism promotion on an advertising board whilst returning from Jummah this afternoon, which features an up-close image of a virtually naked woman. So there we have it: a nation apparently founded on …
It is interesting where my frequent digressions lead me. I have a tendency to see in other people’s writing what they did not intend, or never could have intended: the little snippet, the sentence or the word, which leads me off in an altogether new direction. Late last night I was thinking about that article …
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 …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4965116.stm Oh Muslim youth, I weep for you. Those of you who gather outside the mosque immediately after Jummah prayer, the F-word already littering your conversations once more. Those of you stunting on your mountain bikes in front of old ladies so that they quake in their shoes. Those of you who park on private …
For the second time I watched Rabbit-Proof Fence this weekend. It tells the story of ‘half-caste’ children who were brought up in camps and homes in an attempt to ‘advance’ them into white society. Thousands of children were forcibly removed from Aboriginal mothers between 1900 and 1971. The film is the true story of Molly …
Mainstream contemporary discourse represents a relativist worldview, wherein there is no truth, only ideas and arguments; all beliefs are generally valid, although some are more valid than others. For people of faith this has major implications. A few years ago, one of the discussions of the Church of England’s General Synod concerned Christian witness in …
A visitor to this site has asked me to comment on an article by one Mona Charen entitled, Stand up: Wafa Sultan is passing on a website called Townhall.com. This is a US website which prides itself on being an exchange for conservative thoughts and ideas. Charen worked in the White House Office of Public …
Long before the Make Poverty History campaign caught the public imagination—its huge momentum so famously derailed by four bombs on the London transport system last July—another global movement was calling for the cancellation of the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries. At the turn of the millennium Africa was said to be paying $200 …
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 …
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 …
Last night, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks died peacefully in her sleep. Refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in 1955, she unwittingly initiated the US civil rights movement. Following her arrest for this ‘crime’, Baptist minister Martin Luther King organised a mass black boycott of buses …
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 …
Encountering Christian-Muslim dialogue for the first time eight years ago was naturally a culture shock. Every young and enthusiastic activist owned a grainy, yellowy video with poor quality sound of a great debate between Ahmed Deedat and Jimmy Swaggart. As pamphlets detailing 101 contradictions in the Bible were pressed into my hands I wondered what …
Apparently the loss of British life is only a tragedy if it is a means of scoring points against Islam. If ever we are unfortunate enough to mention our faith or to walk to the mosque for prayer, our socialist companions remind us that Muslims blew up three tube trains and a bus in London …
