My evening with Brother Ali, the albino Muslim face of hip hop
I had a fascinating conversation with Brother Ali the other night. I’ve been a fan of the hip hop artist for a while now, and his live set completely exceeded my expectations (even though he graded...
View ArticleWhy I feel solidarity with the creators of South Park
You know how I'd like to illustrate this blog about censorship in the new episode of South Park? With a nice, big pic, right at the top, 460 pixels by 288, of the Prophet Mohammed. Not doing anything...
View ArticleThe Stoning of Soraya M is little more than boring racism. Christian...
The Stoning of Soraya M puts on a good face – it seems to be a morality tale about misogyny and religious extremism and the deadliness of inaction. Its central message (hey, how about NOT stoning...
View ArticleUgandan newspaper calls for 'hanging' of homosexuals
This is appalling, and desperately sad. A Ugandan newspaper has published, as a front-page story, a list of the country's 100 "top homos", and printed their names and addresses, in a move horribly...
View ArticleDoes Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence represent the 'true face' of Islam?
I seem to spend a lot of time on this blog complaining about something ghastly and/or intolerant by Christian groups, whether it's the prurient obsession with other people's sex lives or the...
View ArticleKoran-burning Pastor Terry Jones: Theresa May has a rare opportunity to stand...
Two things that seem, to me, to be uncontroversial: Terry Jones (the angry pastor with the facial hair, not the frequently nude ex-Python) is a swivel-eyed lunatic of the first water; and the English...
View ArticleSalman Rushdie and the Jaipur Literary Festival: the zealots have triumphed...
It is almost a quarter of a century since Penguin published Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, and the storm it incited has never died down. Muslims were infuriated by Rushdie’s portrayal of...
View ArticleWhen will we see an Islamic Enlightenment?
I’ve just read a review by Paul Berman in The New Republic of “Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide”, written by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, and published by the...
View ArticleApostasy and fluffy kittens: Sudan and us
The world was rightly appalled by the death sentence which recently faced the pregnant Meriam Yahya Ibrahim in Sudan. She was raised a Christian by her mother and she married a Christian, but because...
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