I’m a non-binary Briton. And proud.
All this hype about Muslims not being British enough reminds me of Barack Obama’s 50% white heritage and the question that no one asks: Just how white do you have to be to not be black. The clear answer is you would need to be 100% white. We have become so used to this odd definition that a blue eyed, white woman with a perm was able to say she was black, stood for and was elected President of a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the USA. Presumably people put her skin colour…
Would a Brexit shield us from the storm?
It’s not looking pretty in Europe. Through the mainstream media lens that most Britons rely on to see across the channel, and even more so through the unregulated and wildly distorting social media lens, the picture presented is one of terrifying “Islamisation” at the hands of uncivilised and out of control Muslim immigrants with savages raping and pillaging on a scale not seen since the Vikings invaded. In fact a recent rise in Pro-Viking immigrant propaganda seems to show nobody has ever been as bad as Muslims are now. The Daily Mail gave us “Raping and pillaging? Viking conquests were…
Rotherham Grooming: Inconvenient Facts EXPOSED
Rotherham grooming. We really should have read the Jay Report. This week three brothers were given a 19 to 35 year imprisonment sentence for their abhorrent abuse of vulnerable young girls in Rotherham. A sensitive topic, and one that in no way detracts from the stories of the victims, is concern over the huge damage the press coverage of this case has caused the Muslim community as a whole and the Pakistani heritage community in particular. There is also a feeling of intimidation to acquiesce to demands to apologise and a fear that questioning the narrative will be portrayed as…
The ‘Regulating Madrasas’ Bill: battered, bruised and bloodied, but not dead yet.
Madrasas can give a slight sigh of relief, for now, before taking a deep breath and wondering what the government will try next. The proposal for regulating “Out-of-school Education Settings” appears less likely to proceed as planned after the government received many thousands of replies to the consultation from piano teachers and Christian Sunday Schools indignant that they were being caught in a net clearly designed to target Muslims. Thankfully many other groups fit the bill. The proposal was debated among MPs recently and, along with noting that not one of the 13 Muslim MPs were present for the important…
Are Muslims anti-democratic subversives or champions of a more democratic way?
Are Muslims anti-democratic subversives or champions of a more democratic way? Under a dictatorship it is clear that the ruler is in full control of where the nation is going and how to get there. Any attempt to change the ruler is suppressed and no one expects they have the right to influence him. That said he would do well to pay some attention to the people’s opinion or risk rebellion fermenting. Democracy is sometimes defined as “Rule by the people” though it can never be that the people can all rule at the same time. At most the people…
Does Islamophobia now sell better than sex?
Does Islamophobia now sell better than sex? To break up the festive cheer on Boxing Day the Times published a front page article under a bold title: “Muslims ‘silent on terror’”. It was repeated on their website with a standard picture of some Muslims wearing niqābs titled “Muslims ‘stay silent’ on extremism tip-off scheme”. The number of referrals made to Prevent from the community was repeatedly implied to be a clear sign that “Muslims are boycotting the country’s key anti-radicalisation programme” and that there was “concern that the police are being denied information that might prevent terrorist attacks”. 9/11 was…
The Western suffering from the denied revelation
I often sit in Islamic lectures and realise the concepts are familiar but the language is not. I do not mean Arabic instead of English rather the starting point for understanding concepts is different. Recently in a seminar on Aqīdah a fundamental question was asked: “What benefits are there to this knowledge?” The answers from lifelong Muslims showed there was a starting point that did not encompass imagining having no knowledge of Aqīdah at all. For me, while previously a non-Muslim with no Aqīdah, the effect I remember most clearly was suffering a guilty conscience with very limited understanding of…
Revelation is the only source of true wisdom
It is safe to say the word "wisdom" is a little enigmatic but to define it by thinking about when we use the words "wise" or "wiser" we can unravel what it means. When we say "that was a wise decision" it is always comparative, we mean it was a "wiser" decision than another. If we say "he is a wise old man" we mean "he is wiser than me" or "wiser than most people". Neither of these indicate that they are infinitely wise, just comparatively "wiser". The world we live in is complicated to say the least. There…
The Unquenchable Thirst For War
18 years ago today war-thirsty neocons tried ushering the globe into a new phase of endless destruction we are still experiencing today
Manufacturing Islamophobia
As someone who lived in London during part of the IRA bombing campaign I remember the “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude. I came out of a building on Regents Street one evening, not realising I was in the middle of an area that had been cordoned off by the bomb squad. I got pulled into a doorway by a policeman while a controlled explosion was carried out a few hundred yards away. I never found out if it had been a live bomb or not as nothing was later reported about it on the news. Fast forward to today…
