Finally, people who can’t think for themselves have an easy way to get instructions.

A telephone help-line offering advice about the true teaching of Islam is being launched in the UK today. Callers to the Islamic Hotline will get answers to their questions within 48 hours, from scholars trained at one of the world’s principal Islamic universities…The Islamic Hotline believes it has good news for British Muslims – keeping the laws of Islam is not as difficult as you thought.

How nice – submitting to the authority of reactionary outdated self-serving androcentric laws dating from fourteen centuries ago is not as difficult as you thought. It’s still a ridiculous pathetic slavish way to live and to make others live, … Read the rest

This is one reason I think the Times article is very odd and in fact unfair.

There is no Muslim outrage about this book yet, but the fear of it is palpable enough for the Sunday Times to write an article about it. And if that outrage does indeed materialize, this will be yet another case, as here and here and here, of Muslims becoming outraged over accurate representations of Islamic texts and teachings.

Yes, it will, but on the other hand, in this case as well as the Jewel of Medina/Denise Spellberg case, it will also be a case of ‘Muslims’ (which is to say, some Muslims) being nudged into becoming outraged. I’m really not sure it’s fair … Read the rest

First posted May 31

Okay, now you know all. I said last week ‘For reasons which I will explain another day, the publisher became nervous’; now you know the reasons. I must say, given the way the article is worded, and given the headline, I understand the publisher’s reaction better, and I regret the slightly acid tone of my post.

The article is, frankly, worded in a rather peculiar way. There’s a very noticeable lack of attribution throughout – there are free-floating feelings and reactions with no actual people having them or expressing them or taking ownership of them. There are fears and concerns and suggestions, but the reader can’t tell whose fears and concerns and suggestions they are.… Read the rest