now, i haven’t seen the “dispatches” programme yet, it’s on my sky+ box waiting to be viewed. however, i was quite amused to be warned by one naeem darr, who i understand is some sort of spokesman for our old friends the muslim safety forum, to have my complaint ready. helpfully, he then went on to provide me with a set of points to complain about to channel 4 and jim kirkpatrick mp. i reproduce his email in full – and include in bold the bits which he appears to know before broadcast:
Dispatches Islamophobic documentary
Channel 4’s Dispatches is due to broadcast a damaging and misleading programme on Monday 1st March at 8pm. For nearly a year the programme had undercover reporters attending events (including private meetings) of Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) and passing themselves off as Muslims and friends, but acting as agents provocateurs to solicit replies to use against IFE.
david t from harry’s place forwarded me this cartoon by eli valley, whose satirical strips appear monthly in the leading us jewish magazine “the forward”.
although the mainstreammedia has already picked up the story, we’re sure that the good folk of wootton bassett would nonetheless appreciate a message of support. it appears that they are the latest stop on the publicity circuit for everyone’s favourite islamist nutjobs, the al-muhajigoon squad. predictably, the edl have vowed to picket the mosques frequented by the leader of the group that currently calls itself “islam4uk” and, no doubt, stephen gash of “sioe” has ordered an extra copy of “soldier of fortune” magazine in his excitement.
in the spirit that got these imbeciles to cancel their most recent demo and, naturally, in tribute to the recent foiling of the detroit pants bomber, i humbly propose the following:
let all who wish to show this truly grotesque man up as the nasty, ridiculous bigot he is – FLY THE UNDERPANTS!
This is a guest post by Ishtiaq Hussain from the Quilliam Foundation
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Quran inscriptions on wall, Lodhi Gardens, Delhi. Credit: Shashwat Nagpal
Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is an Abrahamic faith and a Monotheistic religion. Its followers are called Muslims. Islam was founded in Arabia in the 7th century by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) fought against oppression, injustice and corruption. During his lifetime he was able to create a just and fair society based on religious tolerance. After his death Islam quickly spread to various parts of the world and within a hundred years it had attracted a huge following. Various Muslim Empires were created by Muslims. Islam had not defined a set political system so these Empires were able to establish themselves and flourish by using the systems which Muslims encountered when they gained hegemony.
Having listened to the two young ignoramuses put forward by the BNP to represent them on BBC’s Radio 1 last week, I began to think of a debate I had with some of my friends a few years ago.
You see, all my life up until then I had never considered myself British, I had always seen myself as English. My argument was that since I was born in England, spoke English as a first language and displayed a culture that was distinctively English, and different when compared to a Scottish, Welsh or Irish identity, I had a right to identify myself as English. This right should be extended to my children, my children’s children, and so on regardless of the fact that my parents were born in Zanzibar.
This is a very interesting take on the hijab debate – a video about a British Muslim woman who decided to take off the hijab after realising she was wearing it not for personal pious reasons but political ones – contrary to what Islamists claim. She is of the opinion that it’s better for society that men learn how to function appropriately around unveiled women than that society shroud women from men and place the blame for men’s behavioural inadequacies on women’s shoulders.
Watch it through as she visits various Muslim women around the world and investigates their attitudes towards the hijab.
Muslims living in Britain and around the world are often outraged when Muslims are killed or Muslim holy sites attacked. This is a normal and often admirable reaction. However, I am increasingly frustrated that this moral outrage is often highly selective and is only ignited when it is non-Muslims who are doing the killing and attacking.
In the mid-90s, I remember the outrage amongst Muslims in Britain when the Bosnia tragedy was unfolding. There were street protests, leaflet campaigns, conferences and a great deal of activism and mobilisation against the war. Muslims were equally vocal about the war in Chechnya and yet there was total silence about the simultaneous events in East Timor. Here we had Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country – organising and arming militias to conduct an armed campaign which left 1400 dead and made 300,000 into refugees. This followed a 24 year occupation by Indonesia in which an estimated 102,800 died. Did the fact that this time it was Muslims doing the killing make a difference?
This is a guest post by Lucy James, a research fellow at Quilliam
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South Asian Muslim women are the most economically disadvantaged group in terms of religion, ethnicity and gender in the UK today. A recent poll of unemployed South Asian Muslim women showed that not only are they disadvantaged, but that they are misunderstood and not being given sufficient support in order to break a cycle that, given the chance, will transmit similar attitudes on to future generations. The poll— published in Quilliam’s latest report Immigrant, Muslim, Female: Triple Paralysis [pdf]— established what these Muslim women want: they want to work. Over 600 women were interviewed, 57% of which said that they wanted a paid job. This figure is really positive. Although 39% said that they didn’t want to work, many of these women may have said so because of a lack of confidence rather than as a downright refusal to work.
“You are not British, Pakistani, Indian, Bengali, Arab or African. These are colonial identities, you are only a Muslim and that’s what god wants you to be” (Member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir)
After the Second World War issues of national identity began to change. The introduction of foreign cheap labour (from former colonies) brought with it foreign cultures and traditions. The newly arriving immigrants retained a desire to one day return to their home nations as ‘rich men of high statuses’. This mindset encouraged them to lead a non-confrontational life here in the UK. They tolerated discrimination and soft-racism mainly because they did not intend to stay in the UK permanently.
Rafia Zakaria makes a profoundly necessary point about Obama’s “muslim speech” in Cairo. Not the content of it – that’s been done to death – but how muslim reactions to it throws particular Arab perceptions of Southasian issues into stark relief. In particular, this is a comment on how Arab muslims interpreted the parts of the speech that was directed at the Arab World to be of far greater import than the sections the President dedicted to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Given the reaction of some Arab commenters, you could well think Islam is all about the importance of being an Arab muslim. Unfortunately Arabs and Southasians are both guilty of promulgating this racist quackery.
While the speech itself was careful to include Pakistanis in the “Muslim” world, it was interesting to see the responses of several Middle Eastern anchors and commentators. Not only did many insist on focusing on the “Arab” portions of the American president’s speech but several insisted that the speech was in fact targeted exclusively to Middle Eastern Arabs.
although the 
