My Teddy Bear is called Muhammed

This morning, the story of Gillian Gibbons was sprawled all over the front pages of every newspaper I could lay my hands on. Gibbons, a 54-year old Liverpudlian teacher in Sudan has been jailed for allowing one of her seven-year old pupils to name their teddy bear “Muhammed”. Declaring this as blasphemy, the Sudanese authorities [...]

Is Islam good for London: A Perspective

Is Islam Good for London?  Having attended, what was purported to be, a debate about Islam in London, I must admit I feel sorry for Londoners. For two reasons: – it appears that way too many people intensely dislike Muslims. – Muslims are most likely partly to blame.  I am happy to be a South [...]

Draconian Measures Enforced by Fear

On July the 7th 2005 Rachel North was on her way to work, her carriage was carrying one of the suicide bombers who killed 26 people that day. Earlier this week she was asked to give evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee on the government’s proposed anti-terror legislation. Writing in Comment is Free in [...]

Is Islam Good for London?

While the government harps on about social inclusion and community cohesion, the media continues to muddy the debate with biased sample surveys focusing on whether or not Islam can contribute to British society – the most recent one being carried out by the Evening Standard. The YouGovStone survey on Islam published earlier this week looked [...]

Pakistan: Showdown of a showcase state

What has General Pervez Musharraf done for the country of Pakistan? In my opinion, nothing. Our Dear ‘dictator’ has done nothing to improve the quality of life in the state of Pakistan. Instead he has focused on enhancing an image which runs on the approval of the west; a view that apparently takes Pakistan into [...]

Equal opportunities or a step beyond reason?

You may have seen it, you may have heard about it: the most recent discrimination case being fought by Muslim woman, Bushra Noah. Now the story goes a bit like this, Bushra Noah (19 year old hijabi) goes to Sarah Desrosiers (32 year old hippie) for a job as a hairdresser. Desrosiers tells her that [...]

‘Sour’ism

In my relative short stay in the UK, I have been able to attend many interesting and informative lectures and events. A recent one turned out to be a tad different- the first sign was the queues outside the venue. Who queues to listen to a lecture, I thought. But this was a high profile [...]

Britz – Part II (Nasima’s Story)

Yesterday there was a tidal wave of blogs and articles written in response to the first part of Brtiz, with a divided opinion amongst most Muslim writers about the content of the film; some were hailing the docu-drama as a positive step towards raising awareness, and the other (not so convinced) half dismissing it as [...]

Britz – Part I (Sohail’s Story)

Never before has there been so much press coverage about a TV docu-drama. Britz, the work of the renowned Director Peter Kosminsky, was aired for the first time on Channel 4 last night. The highly controversial and much debated telly-film is a fictitious drama about two young Muslim British siblings in the aftermath of the [...]