Semantics

From AIM (Asian in Media), June 12, 2006 Muslim journalists, writers, filmmakers and activists are banding together to form a new organisation aimed at influencing the media to move beyond “easy and simplistic portrayal of Muslims” and build on issues relevant to British Muslims today. Called ‘Muslims for Secular Democracy’, the lobbying group is being headed by the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and supported by others such as Ghayasuddin Siddique of the Muslim Parliament, playright Nasreen Rehman and Sharq magazine editor Reem Maghrebi. The organisation says it supports a clear separation between religion and the state and wants to make “democratic…

I would vote for this Republican: I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head. No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

All right, allow me one more indulgence and then I will keep quite for a while. I am a pacifist. I am also pragmatic and take responsibility for my actions. I subscribe to the Kurtzian view of war. If you are going to fight a war, fight it to win. War is an act of barbarism. Thus, to have rules such as the Geneva conventions govern the conduct of fighting and treatment of combatants, to me, seems ridiculous. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now argued for the right to drop the bomb on the Chinese and the Vietnamese. He understood the horror…