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Hijab in the UK

Via this Crooked Timber piece [sorry CT folks, can’t find your trackback ID] I found out about this case in the UK about a Muslim girl wanting to cover in school. I like Harry’s last paragraph: But the fact that the regulations might drive a girl into an educational situation in which her religious beliefs will not be challenged or tested seems to me a reason for bending, or revising the rules, not a consideration in their favour. The parents’ enthusiasm that their child should attend a state comprehensive school is to their credit. Telling them that they should school…

Talking some sense

Anwar Ibrahim in MWU captures my sentiments precisely: But my message to the perpetrators of these vile acts, whoever they may be, is this: In the name of God, what do you think you are fighting against and what are you fighting for? Because what you are really doing is neither war nor jihad. This is just the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians who have done no wrong. Such actions have no place in Islam and as all the scholars of the Muslim world have stated, it is simply haram. So what do you think you are doing? How are…

Grass Roots Development May Hold Promise in the Muslim World

I would actually hope that it holds promise for everyone: There is, Khan averred, a “dominant player fallacy” or the tendency to place “too much reliance in national governments and other institutions which may have relatively superficial connections to life at the grass-roots level.” Thus, “urban-based outsiders often look at these situations from the perspective of the city center looking out to a distant countryside, searching for quick and convenient levers of influence.” The secret, then, is to work “from the bottom up” and not from the top down, as is so often the case. As he told the dinner…