Afghanistan - pride and prejudice [updated 27th April 2008]

General Guthrie thinks that the war in Afghanistan meets the 'just war' criteria! Sir John Keegan, military historian, thinks 'orientals' prefer treachery and deceit as the best ways to overcome an enemy!

Read on.....

Ken, one Cricklewood household salutes you, what you stand for, and your achievements for London. The clock on progressive politics in London has been turned back two decades.

The 4-day literary Hay Festival at the Alhambra 3-6th April was a unique and highly enjoyable cultural event which included lectures, discussion, poetry recitals, bookstalls, book signings, film showings and music concerts.

Salaam blogger's own Islamophobia watch: quotations by 'leaders of society' about Muslims in Britain - statements that serve to promote misunderstandings and prejudices...

Like the good old Duke of York, the Tories are sometimes marching up the hill, and sometimes down again thus (i) sending out confused signals within the ranks, and (ii) obfuscating the facts

Last November Brown declared in the Commons, “Mr Speaker, it is by seeking to build on shared interests and shared values that we will isolate extremists and foster understanding across faiths”. He also floated the idea of “setting up in Britain a European Centre of Excellence for Islamic studies”.

Hollow laughs and guffaws from the stalls.

“Pakistan was a country orphaned at birth”, thus begins an essay by Aryn Baker, under the heading: National Tragedy: Pakistan was born of hope, but the country seems destined for a life of despair.

It was not long ago that Martin Bright could be regarded as a journalist with a heart – sympathetic to those in distress and facing hardship. In April 2001, while an Observer reporter, he tried to show the link between negative media coverage and assaults on refugees and asylum seekers. A year later another article argued that ‘refugees were not chasing money’ and he also high-lighted issues within the criminal justice system in an article ‘One in hundred black adults now in jail’. This was a commendable social conscience for someone emerging from a privileged background: private schooling in Bristol; Cambridge; first job at the BBC (also in Bristol).

However there was another facet to this personality – a judgmental, holier-than-thou attitude that has obscured the positive side.

The Bishop of Rochester, Nazir Ali is persistently portraying multiculturalism and Muslims as bogeymen – a disservice to both his Church and his roots. Surely it cannot be Muslims – 3% of the population - that threaten “the distinctively Christian character of the nation's laws, values, customs and culture” (Daily Telegraph, 7th January 2008).

Pope Benedict tests the limits of reason in his latest encyclical 'Spe Salvi' .