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Among the people who have entered the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election, triggered by the resignation of David Davis to fight on a civil liberties platform is Jill Saward (campaign site here), who is best known for being the victim of the Ealing Vicarage rape attack in 1986. The last time she was actually famous was in the late 1990s when she was calling for the introduction of what she called a "manslaughter version of rape", i.e. second-degree rape, manslaughter being roughly equivalent to second-degree murder, and suggesting that women who were less than decently dressed might actually be partly to blame for what happened to them. This time, she is openly defending the 42-day detention law, the prevalence of CCTVs and a national DNA database.

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This morning, one of the topics on the Vanessa Feltz show was a young man named Majid Ahmed from Bradford, who had been offered a place at Imperial College, London, to study medicine. Three years earlier, he had been convicted of burglary; not realising that he had to declare his convictions (which were "spent", but this is not an issue with medicine), he informed the medical schools to which he applied in a letter afterwards. After he received the offer, he was called in for a "fitness to practise" interview, which led to his offer being withdrawn. (The story was reported in the Guardian Education supplement today, and you can listen to the actual show on the website here. More: Majid Ahmed on CIF.)

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Rolled-up Trousers: Centre for Social Cohesion

Osama Saeed, who recently helped to establish the Scottish-Islamic Foundation, replies to accusations from the likes of the "Centre for Social Cohesion" that they are some sort of Islamist "front" with links to all sorts of people:

At the same time, we were baffled by a briefing put out by the gloriously named 'Centre for Social Cohesion' warning people against us. They don't have as wide a remit as their name suggests, a quick scan of their website shows almost everything is on the topic of Islam and Muslims, and very few escape their wrath.

Their "research" was in reality nothing more than a quick Google job, and a negatively screened one at that. The tactic of these kind of hatchet jobs which emanate from London is to smear by association. Attaching Muslims with someone controversial is like the "six steps to Kevin Bacon" test. It's a modern day McCarthyism.

We could disavow the A-Z of Muslim groups that are blacklisted, and one or two groups in London have gained celebrity criticising other Muslims on the drop of a hat in a game that never ends. They as a result have no friends, while we're committed to working with our community in improving things wherever necessary. If there's criminality involved, then let the police deal with it, but there's not a hint of that.

These kinds of hatchet jobs, although those in the UK tend to emanate from London, seem to have their origins in the USA, where guilt-by-association smears are a routine tactic of certain pro-Israel agitators.

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The Spectator (with my letter!)

The Spectator (a right-of-centre British political magazine, formerly edited by Boris Johnson) has printed a letter from me in the current edition, written in reply to Rod Liddle who alleged that there is nothing in the Qur'an telling women to wear hijab (so as to legitimise denying women the right to wear it). This is quite a surprise, because not only have they never published a letter from me before, but on one occasion I got a letter telling me that my "poem" had been rejected. Perhaps I should have resubmitted that particular letter in iambic pentameter, but it's too late now.

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From Comment is Free, Inayat Bunglawala examines the case of Hassan Butt, the self-proclaimed ex-jihadist who tells Islam-bashers what they want to hear. He notes that, on his return from Pakistan, Butt attempted to sell his story to the Daily Mirror for £100,000 and that journalists had confided to him that they thought Butt an "absolute stitch up merchant". Mostly in response to the complaints from the media about the police requiring Shiv Malik to turn his material over to them, as they contained what appeared to be the confessions of a terrorist. (Quite possibly, Butt had exaggerated his role, although we might like to know what he was doing in Pakistan if not recruiting or fighting for al-Qa'ida; but I suspect that his turn of coat may have been less a repentance as a realisation that life was not going to be so easy anymore for a loud-mouthed nut.)

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Why is it that the BBC London traffic news people cannot find any better ways of identifying the location of delays on the roads than a reference to a junction nobody who does not pass that way all the time will remember? Yesterday I heard a report about something happening at the "Movers Lane interchange", and I don't remember them mentioning where that is (as it turns out, it's on the A13 in east London). They commonly give references to side roads, when if you're going along a main road and you are not from the area, you won't know the names. For example, I don't know the names of every stretch of the A24 as it runs from Ewell to Clapham Common. I know there's a London Road, a Stonecot Hill, a Merantun Way (that's new), and a Balham High Road - oh, and a bit of Clapham Common - is it east or south side? - but I don't know each bit, let alone every side road. So, if they want to tell us there's a delay, they should tell us relative to landmarks on that road, not to side streets whose names you can't see from a driving seat.

The same station, yesterday, gave us "breaking news", apprently shoving other stories further down the list, which turned out to be that a guy who was found guilty of murder a couple of weeks ago (for hiring two hitmen to kill his wife so he could claim her life insurance and move in with a prostitute) had been given a life sentence. This is not "breaking news" because you know someone will get life when they are found guilty of murder (unless they are juveniles, in which case they get indeterminate sentences); the only thing to decide is the tariff (the actual minimum time inside; whole-life sentences are rare in the UK). I don't want to hang around to hear "breaking news" which I knew two weeks ago.

Finally, whose idea is it to set the speed limits to 30mph on bits of dual carriageway in London where roadworks are being done? On Monday I came off the M3 at Sunbury onto the road it leads into - the A316 - at which point the speed limit came down to 50 (fair enough), and then well before passing over the bridge they were working on, the limit came down to 30. This is really disconcerting for a driver who has just driven straight off a motorway where he had been doing 60 to 70 all the way from Southampton; has nobody ever pointed this out to those who set these speed limits. On motorways it's rare to have speed limits lower than 50 in roadworks; it seems that since 50 was the normal speed limit, someone decided that it had to come down further because there were roadworks. It doesn't make sense, and it makes even less to have the limits come down a long way before you hit the narrowed lanes or other signs of roadworks. My impression coming through those roadworks was that the limit did not need to be lower than 40.

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Last week, I replaced the Linux distribution on my laptop's hard drive; I had been using Fedora 9, and I replaced it with openSUSE version 11. SUSE was the first Linux distro I tried when I first used Linux in late 2002, and by and large I have gone back to it despite experimenting with others. Right now, I have SUSE on my laptop and Ubuntu on my Compaq desktop machine. I am not sure how long I'll keep on with it - I have read that the new version of Mandriva is good, which is very unusual for them - but here are my impressions, anyway.

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On Sunday, the Sunday Times reported that a Somali Muslim man lost an award he had been due to receive at a ceremony last Thursday at the Africa Centre in Dublin, Ireland, because he indicated that he would not shake hands with a female presenter (via Islamophobia Watch). The award was for voluntary work - in his case, raising money for Amnesty International - and the awards were "designed to highlight the positive work done by refugees and asylum seekers in Irish communities". As it happens, the paper quotes Mubarak Habib, a project officer at the Africa Centre, as saying that the re-awarding of the prize to someone else, who was not even present, was a mistake unrelated to the original winner's request, and that he would be receiving a joint award. (More: Gorey Muslim Community.)

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OK, so people are up in arms over some of Primark's suppliers being found to use child labour in India. While I suppose Primark cancelling its orders from them shows that they care about ethical sourcing to some degree (assuming they don't quietly resubmit the orders a few weeks from now), anyone who thinks you can get clothes as cheap as you can now with just bulk buying and avoiding advertising campaigns, which is how Primark claim they keep their prices down, is a fool. Even without child labour, the whole story of manufacturing in the Far East has to do with keeping wages down and regulations loose. Does anyone remember being able to get clothes made in England? These days hardly any of it is, and the reason is that they could not compete with cheap labour in the Far East, where poverty pay and curtailed union rights are the norm. Think about it.

On Wednesday, BBC Four aired the first in its Jews season, focussing on the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi community in Stamford Hill, north London (watch it here until Tuesday when the next episode is out). The programme focussed on a Hassidic Jew called Samuel as he tried to get back into Jewish life after several spells in jail for drug running; apparently he used his Jewish "uniform" and the fact that such people don't usually get into trouble as a disguise (a precursor of the "niqab trick" allegedly used by one of the bungling Somali bombers in London few years ago, except that he didn't need to dress as a woman).

The story itself was interesting, but I found the continual attempts to mock their subjects with stupid questions about Jewish dietary and dress laws annoying. The laws they were following are not that far removed from ours, although in my observation the dress of the Jewish women in that programme was both duller and less concealing than that of most Muslim women. Clearly they knew less about dealing with the media than Muslims do; I would have told the journalists flat out that we follow these rules because they are part of our religion, full stop, rather than offering timid justifications about temptation and so on.

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BBC NEWS | UK | Hate preacher 'knew 7/7 bomber'

An interesting headline for an interview with "Shaikh" Abdullah Faisal, the extremist Wahhabi preacher who was jailed in the UK in 2003 for incitement to murder. The fact that Faisal knew someone who carried out a bombing does not mean much unless Faisal encouraged him to do it, which he denies doing. People far more moderate than Faisal knew one of the 2003 Tel Aviv pizza parlour bombers.

After his early release, he was deported to Jamaica where, according to this document released by the Brixton "salafis", he praised the Jamaican authorities for the warm reception they gave him and compared himself to Marcus Garvey, a (non-Muslim) Jamaican who was deported from the USA. The author of this BBC piece, however, notes that Faisal appears to hate non-Muslims and "assume that they hate Islam", and did not make eye contact with him during the interview. Perhaps he speaks with a forked tongue; perhaps he was just glad to be out of jail and back in Jamaica when he gave interviews there.

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Various newspapers, including today's Guardian, have reported that Peter Akinola, an Anglican bishop in Nigeria who is a well-known "conservative" figure in the worldwide Anglican church, has been denied access (from Israel) to Jordan, where he was to have attended a conference of conservative Anglican clergy, on the grounds that his Nigerian diplomatic passport does not entitle him to free access (presumably because the conference is not of a diplomatic nature). It has been suggested, however, that the real reason for his denial of entry was his connections to violence in Nigeria:

The question being asked is whether a threat against Nigerian Muslims, and his refusal to condemn a massacre of 700 Muslims in Yelwa in 2004 by thugs wearing insignia associated with the Christian Association of Nigeria of which he was then president, might have reached the Jordanian authorities. More pertinently, critics are wondering how he ever qualified for a diplomatic passport.

The conference, Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference), has been relocated to Jerusalem, where the local Anglican bishop is said not to want them there either. If the reason does have anything to do with his stance on violence in Nigeria, it is surely welcome that an individual who does not disassociate himself from murderous mob violence finds his attempts to swan around the world disrupted. It is ironic that an outfit which advocates "muscular" Christianity, including "witnessing", or whatever they call it, to Muslims and standing up to the "onslaught" of Islam sees fit to hold its conference in a mostly Muslim country, and it says a lot that it then relocates because it cannot function without a figure as tarnished as Akinola.

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MPACUK - Bushra Wins!

The BBC have reported that a sister named Bushra Noah, who was refused a job as a hair stylist because the potential employer regarded her headscarf as being incompatible with the funky image of her salon and thought a hair stylist should have her own hair on display, has won £4,000 compensation. The compensation was for hurt feelings produced by a 15-minute interview; as for the claim of job discrimination itself, it was dismissed on the grounds that the court was satisfied that sr. Bushra was treated no worse than someone who would always have covered their hair for any other reason, i.e. she was not discriminated against just for being Muslim, rather for covering her hair.

The salon owner said she could not understand why someone who was against the display of hair would be in the hair industry, which strikes me as odd, because Muslims are not against the display of hair per se - just its public display. Muslim women are allowed to display their hair when around their family or other women, and no doubt display it to great effect at parties and the like, but they cover it in public. Does the salon just require hair on display, or does it have to be cut and styled as well, since that's what the salon does? Perhaps a woman with too much hair would not have got a job there either.

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The Official Website of Shaykh Pirzada | News | Shaykh Pirzada condemns 42-day detention

Further to the controversy over whether the British Muslim Forum's shaikhs have supported or opposed the position of Khurshid Ahmed, the chairman of the BMF, Shaikh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada, the director of the Jamia al-Karam and one of the BMF's trustees, has opposed the position of Khurshid Ahmed CBE regarding 42-day detention for suspected terrorists (although he has not condemned him by name):

The founder and principal of Jamia Al-Karam, Shaykh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada has commented that imprisoning - merely out of suspicion - any individual for up to 42 days does not befit a civilised and developed state such as the United Kingdom. Whilst disagreeing and severely opposing the Counter-Terrorism Bill, Shaykh M I H Pirzada stressed that this Bill is a clear infringement of basic human rights.

Praising the stance of the former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, Shaykh M I H Pirzada stated, "As a consequence of this, the reaction of the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, that came in the form of his resignation from Parliament is clear. The courage that he has displayed by giving his resignation is honourable and worthy of praise. Moreover, the Conservative Party has given its indication that if they form the government, they will re-consider and re-examine this Bill."

Appealing to the Muslims, Shaykh M I H Pirzada said, "The Muslims, in particular, have been greatly saddened at the passing of this Bill in the House of Commons by the narrowest of margins, since, it is the Muslims who eventually become the predominant target and victims of such legislation. Therefore, I appeal to all Muslims that they profoundly lobby against this Bill so that this Bill is rejected by the House of Lords."

This should serve as a correction to those who insist that Bareilawis in general are sell-outs or tame "Sufi-wufis", particularly after the antics of certain elements who ran to the media to denounce the Tablighi Jama'at as extremists in order to score petty sectarian points over them by blocking the construction of the Abbey Mills mosque.

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Via London Assembly member Murad Qureshi, the man who attacked one of the imams at Regent's Park mosque in London last year, leaving him blind for life, has been detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act. The councillor seeks to reassure the Muslim community that the attacker, Brian Donegan, will be detained for life, despite the not-guilty verdict, which was achieved because of Donegan's "insanity".

As he points out, the man can only be released with the approval of the Home Secretary; this means that he may well be freed when the doctors clear him for release, which will probably be several years but it will probably happen, because the case neither had a high profile nor did it involve loss of life (although people detained in the mental health system, even for non-lethal violence, sometimes spend longer in hospital than common murderers spend in jail, as was the case with Janet Cresswell).

Br Murad's blog also alludes to the possibility of the Egyptian government pulling the imams out, which would not only be a huge loss to the community but would also necessitate finding imams from somewhere. This would either mean the British Indo-Pak Muslim community or Saudi Arabia, or perhaps Morocco. Either way, the mosque would need imams, and the next time an Islamophobic nut like Donegan wants to attack an imam, he can go and poke out a Saudi's or a Pakistani's eyes instead of an Egyptian's. It is not as if attacks on Muslims, or indeed general senseless violence against people, is anything new in the UK; it would be a sad day when the Muslim community in London has its imams withdrawn just because an Egyptian citizen gets hurt.

Islamophobia Watch also has some notes on what was in the media in the days before the shaikh was attacked.

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We're a nation of interfering traffic wardens | Camilla Cavendish - Times Online

An excellent article (ma sha Allah) in the Times on Thursday (yes, I sometimes read papers other than the Guardian, although in this case I picked it up on the train from someone who had finished with it) about the proliferation of state-funded busybodies and jobsworths which has appeared in the UK recently, which has made a lot of people fearful of involving the state in their lives:

Taller than me, [the official] called for "back-up" on his walkie-talkie because I, with my two small children and our heavy bag, was "obstructing" an empty walkway. We were there because my husband had gone to buy tickets for a train that we were going to miss after Screecher Man had refused our pleas to let us pay on board.

It was his cold hatred that unnerved me, and the acute pleasure he took in making us miss our train. We weren't trying to slip unnoticed across an international border. We were catching the 14.32 to Sutton.

We have become objects of suspicion to institutions that used to make us feel secure: banks, councils, the police. In turn, we distrust them.

A report by Harriet Sergeant for Civitas describes the recent jump in complaints by law-abiding people against the police. A 19-year old student was arrested and detained for five hours for holding a Tube lift door open with his foot. A man was nicked for pulling over to answer a phone call. Each example sounds silly, tabloid. But there are too many to ignore. Surrey Police's recent decision to abandon box-ticking is a measure of their concern about the corrosion of their relationship with the public.

A year ago a respected group of midwives, obstetricians and researchers called the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services wrote to the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson. Their letter said that "there is now no health professional, or official help line that parents feel they can safely ask for help". They described people who avoid health visitors, because they see them as "health police". They told of mothers with postnatal depression who will not go to the doctor for fear of alerting social services. They said that an increasing number of children are taught at home because "the educational system is now seen as part of the surveillance process". Their letter made 15 points, many devastating.

This should give anyone a clue who wonders why people resist obvious moves to increase the powers of state bodies, as with the stubborn refusal of the Irish to ratify the new European treaty by referendum, despite its approval by their country's two main political parties. I question the comparison to traffic wardens, though - most traffic wardens seem to be foreigners, usually West Africans.

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