Harry's Place

Lately it seems– in the words of the late, great Rodney Dangerfield– that Hezbollah don’t get no respect.

In June their coalition lost a parliamentary election in Lebanon that they were widely expected to win. And of course Hezbollah’s chief patron, financial backer and weapons supplier– the Islamic Republic of Iran– has had a rough go [...]

This is a guest post by Raziq and also appears on The Spittoon
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There is a common misconception that the roots of radical Islamism stem from grievances in the Middle East i.e. Israel/Palestine. This is actually not true. The Indian Sub-continent is just as responsible for radical Islamism as the Middle East is thanks to one [...]

The New Humanist blog reports that author Sebastian Faulks has got into a spot of bother.
In an interview with The Times, our wordsmith with a disciplined pen but a careless tongue expressed the following opinion: The Quran is very disappointing from a literary point of view and lacks an ethical dimension.
Actually, so that the full [...]

This is a cross-post from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
The narrowly avoided appearance of an al-Qaeda sympathiser on Kensington and Chelsea council premises illustrates the failures of the government’s Prevent agenda.
Last Sunday, the Observer reported that an Islamist preacher who supports al-Qaeda was banned from addressing an event next Sunday at the Kensington Town Hall.
Anwar al-Awlaki was [...]

The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has been investigating the claims of organ theft.
Who precisely is saying that Bilal Ahmed Ghanem’s organs were stolen for transplants?
Ghanem’s younger brother, Jalal, said he could not confirm the allegations made by the Swedish newspaper that his brother’s organs had been stolen.
“I don’t know if this is true,” he said. [...]

The New York Times reports:
In an appearance characteristic for its capricious mischief-making, Colonel Qaddafi heaped praise not only on [Prime Minister Gordon] Brown but on Queen Elizabeth and her second son, Andrew, Duke of York, for helping in the release of the [Lockerbie] bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.
…“And I say to my friend Brown, the [...]

This is a guest post by Alex Higgins
During the revolutionary tumult early this summer, the Iranian authorities jailed a swathe of journalists and film-makers. Among them, the talented documentary maker and playwright Maziar Bahari. A Canadian citizen, he lived with his wife, Paola Gourley here in London. She is pregnant with their first child.
Beginning with [...]

We have received the following announcement.
New York, NY – August 24, 2009 – CiF Watch (www.cifwatch.com), a website dedicated to monitoring and exposing antisemitism on the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ blog, announced its launch this week.
Created to address the endemic problem of antisemitic discourse on the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment [...]

Read Searchlight’s report on those stoking hatred and disorder in Luton:
Eight members of a Muslim extremist group, already disowned by the local Muslim community and told to stay away from the Luton mosque, put on an appalling display of hatred towards the troops, calling them child killers and butchers.
It would have been no problem for [...]

Ynet reports:
The Gaza government has decided to impose Islamic clothing on female students at the Strip’s governmental schools and has banned men from teaching at girls’ schools.
As school year opens, Strip’s government decides to impose Islamic clothing on female students at governmental school, bans men from teaching at girls’ schools
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Girls studying at government schools were [...]