** 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,...
Mike Waite, Head of Community Engagement and Cohesion at Burnley Council and author of the newly published ‘Diversity and Common Citizenship’, contributes a blog post to The Guardian on how community cohesion can be enhanced through direct communication and dialogue. He writes: ‘The...
Councillor Salim Mulla (pictured) of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, in a letter published in the Lancashire Telegraph, writes on the detrimental effects of the arrest and discharge of the 12 Muslim men accused of planning an Easter bomb plot, as well as the arrests of nine Muslim men from...
Paul Donovan (pictured) in the Independent writes on the release of the 12 mainly Pakistani men falsely accused of an ‘Easter bomb plot’, and the use of secret evidence to detain individuals without charge or trial. In contrast to the view of Alasdair Palmer in the Daily Telegraph, who...
The Youth Citizenship Commission’s (YCC) consultation, ‘Old Enough to Make a Mark?’, on the lowering of the voting age to 16, has received widespread support from respondents. The consultation received responses from 488 individuals and organisations of which 66% backed reform of the...
Matthew Norman in The Independent writes on the abysmal treatment of the Pakistani nationals recently arrested in the ‘Easter bomb plot’ and later released, only to be handed over to the UK Border Agency. Norman ponders on the symmetry of burying one crisis by offloading another. He...
The European elections will take place on Thursday 4th June with the British electorate voting for 72 MEPs to represent their electoral region in the European Parliament. In total, 500 million Europeans will be eligible to cast their votes from June 4th – 7th voting in the 736 MEPs that will...
Adrian Hamilton in The Independent comments on the infantile conduct of the Western diplomats who walked out during President Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva earlier this week. He writes: ‘Read Ahmadinejad’s address at the UN conference on racism in...
Professor Roy Greenslade (pictured) on his Media blog at The Guardian draws our attention to an important development in media convergence as The Sun newspaper launches a radio show presented by Jon Gaunt via its online newspaper site. SunTalk, which was launched this week, embeds a radio show...
The invitation extended by a former Labour Minister and now independent MP, Clare Short, to Khalid Mish’al, head of Hamas’ political bureau, to address British MPs via a video link has predictably been criticized by the Foreign Office and Israel. The Independent cites a Foreign Office...
Proposed plans by Muslims in Lichfield to build a mosque in the city to serve its growing Muslim community, have provoked the creation of a Facebook campaign against the bid. A Muslim businessman, Abdus Salam, at the centre of the organised effort to submit plans for a mosque to be built in the...
