Harry's Place

Guest post by Jurek Molnar
The Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri (1935 – 2010) is said to be the most important contemporary Arab thinker, whose work is well acknowledged among Arab and Muslim audiences, but was until a decade ago completely unknown in the West.
Thanks to efforts of some Western Arab speaking researchers, parts of [...]

An important point that is too often neglected: There are women in Iran and elsewhere who choose to wear the hijab but firmly (and bravely) insist that other women should not be forced to do so.
These photos show many Iranian women understand the fight against forced hijab is not about whether the hijab is good [...]

Who can forget George Galloway of the Respect party winning Bradford West in a by-election after running a foul sectarian campaign back in 2012? And his tweet saying “shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph?”
The 2015 General Election’s brightest spot was Naz Shah’s defeating him and telling him off for running a further disgusting sectarian [...]

Further to the post re the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) adding Maajid Nawaz to the list of “anti Muslim extremists” here’s a round up of the lazy or malicious mis-readings by the SPLC and some counter arguments.
The SPLC though has dug in. They have read a couple of Guardian posts, one written by that [...]

An editor for the “reformist” Iranian newspaper Shargh has been live-tweeting the destruction of the Saudi embassy in Tehran in the wake of the Sunni Saudi regime’s execution of leading Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
RIGHT NOW: Saudi embassy in Tehran on fire after stormed by protesters over execution of Shiite leader al-Nimr pic.twitter.com/k92bTkh5hb
— Sobhan Hassanvand (@Hassanvand) [...]

Perhaps this offers a bit of hope for better news in the coming year:
Their M.O. is a tried and terrifying one: Launch a raid, single out Christians, and then spray them with bullets.
But when Al-Shabaab militants ambushed a bus Monday, things didn’t go according to plan.
A group of Kenyan Muslims shielded the Christian passengers and [...]

A bit of a fuss is being made in the papers and on social media today about an “experiment” undertaken by some Dutch viral-video generators in which they aim to demonstrate:
What happens when you read people the Bible but tell them it’s the Koran?
According to The Metro, “With all this in mind, two men in [...]

A sitcom parody about an American Muslim family desperately trying to prove their American-ness.
And here’s a report on NPR about two young American Muslim women who have created a podcast called #GoodMuslimBadMuslim– one of whom identifies herself as a “pork-eating, alcohol-drinking, premarital-sex-having Muslim.”

The Washington Post features an article about the popular comedian Humza Arshad, who spreads an anti-extremist message to British Muslim youth.
At a time when the flow of British Muslims to the war in Syria shows no sign of ebbing, Arshad has positioned himself as the anti-Jihadi John. Like Mohammed Emwazi, the scowling Islamic State [...]

This is a guest post by Mehrdad Amanpour
Another day, another outrage carried out by evil & deranged individuals and the usual arguments ensue.
“It had everything/nothing to do with Islam”.
“Muslims should/should not apologise”.
The murders in Paris certainly have nothing to do with the Islam I recognise, nor the Islam followed by the overwhelming majority [...]