** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** Rights group Muslim Engagement & Development (MEND) have launched a new report The Great Debunk: Challenging Islamophobic Conspiracy Theories, which examines how false narratives about Muslims once limited to the far-right fringes have entered mainstream political,...
Very disappointing to find the Jewish Chronicle jump aboard Andrew Gilligan’s anti-IFE crusade with this article on the Tower Hamlets councillor, Lutfur Rahman, standing for the council’s executive mayor position. Perhaps the JC should revisit its letters page and read again the letters sent...
Watch former PM Tony Blair answer questions from Andrew Marr in a BBC interview on his memoirs, the New Labour project and the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. Of course, no admission of responsibility by Blair for the continuing quagmire facing coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan following...
Think tank Demos has released a new publication on the ‘radicalising multiplier’ effect of conspiracy theories and the use made of them by extremist groups. The report ‘The power of unreason: conspiracy theories, extremism and counter-terrorism’ is ‘an analysis of conspiracy theories...
The Department of Communities and Local Government has today released experimental statistics from the first three quarters of the Citizenship Survey 2009-10 (covering months April-Dec 2009) for England and Wales on ‘Attitudes towards Violent Extremism’. The release focuses on questions...
This briefing is a call for the establishment of an All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia tasked with executing ECRI’s recommendations on monitoring and challenging intolerance and discrimination against Muslims through a ‘regular and even closer process of consultation with...
“It’s striking that many American Republicans share with al-Qaeda the view that the West and the Islamic world are caught inevitably in a ‘clash of civilisations’”. This is what Nicholas Kristof’s article in The Scotsman yesterday had to say about the hysteria that has been...
Why are more British Muslim women, without coercion from their fathers or husbands, choosing to wear the face veil (niqab)? On Monday 23rd August, Newsnight aired an interview with four women to ascertain why they adopted the niqab when their mothers did not.
We thought you might enjoy Mark Steel’s comic take on the hypocrisy and confused thought processes of those opposing the proposed Islamic centre in New York. Writing in The Independent he observes: “To give yourself a stressful and futile day, try telling people there are no plans to...
Writing on his Telegraph blog today, Andrew Gilligan has attempted a throw back to his documentary, “Britain’s Islamic Republic”, by “exposing” the name of a person he had kept hidden at the time due to legal advice.
In an excellent piece in The Guardian, Charlie Brooker comments on the hysteria being whipped up by right-wing media elements in the US on the proposed plans for the so-called “Ground Zero mosque”. The facts on the ground are less exciting and far less controversial than the myths being...
