As Sarka noted in an earlier comment, one of the big stories during the recent outage was Mehdi Hasan’s considered post on Muslim antisemitism. This prompted Steve Hynd to write an interesting piece on antisemitism in pro-Palestinian networks, and thus provoke a lively discussion in the comments.
At the weekend I became aware of extraordinary levels of excitement over Eddie Mair’s supposed annihilation of Boris Johnson. Maybe my expectations had been unduly raised, but I didn’t find the interview so very devastating, and I had to agree with Dan Hodges: ‘The common consensus is wrong’.
There has been much talk of immigrants from all quarters – and here are a couple of good pieces from Left Foot Forward and A Very Public Sociologist:
Unlike the tossers who peddle crap about housing queues, over the last couple of years I have helped dozens and dozens of people get on or move up the City Council’s housing waiting list. How many of those, do you suppose, were new arrivals? How many of those were non-white? Do you really want to know?
Over on Engage, I posted about a new report from OHPI on antisemitism on Facebook, which includes suggestions as to how to improve reporting and monitoring processes. On a not dissimilar note Tell MAMA published a post on Richard Dawkins, defending the right to critique barbed remarks without being accused of wishing to shut down free speech. Soon afterwards Dawkins was juxtaposing Islam and Nazism and disingenuously disclaiming any parallel might have been intended. Oh – and when I first posted on Tell MAMA I said I doubted they’d be going after Jesus and Mo but – did I speak too soon?
I always wonder why everyone complains that the term ‘cis’ is somehow challenging. Have these people never heard of Cisalpine Gaul?* Here’s a good place to start catching up with some of the debates within feminism.
Finally – thank you to Bob for hosting this post on recent instances of anti-Roma bigotry and, particularly, a detailed report on the impact of anxieties around visa restrictions on Roma mobility.
* Privilege checked.
Alan A adds:
Apologies for leaping into Sarah’s post, but I wanted to say how very impressed I was by Mehdi Hasan’s post.
Mehdi is a complex guy. He’s essentially a liberal, and is most certainly not an Islamist as some have suggested. However, as is well known, he is a very religious guy, and he’s sometimes wrong-footted by those reflexes. When he gets it wrong, he gets it very wrong. When he gets it right, he is spot on.
