Yahya Birt

Yahya Birt
It is obvious enough that the debate about the place of Islam in Europe has probably never been so important or sharply contested. The numbers of those who think there can be no genuine or settled place for Europe’s second largest religion seem to be growing; and this sentiment now mobilises politics in many [...]

Muslim communities around the country have shunned al-Muhajiroun and its various entities for years and refused to give them a platform. Instead, they have to work through front organisations, hire private halls, set up high-street stalls or leaflet people with their poisonous little tracts. They are utterly marginal but are still able to generate huge [...]

The digital age is crucial to reshaping religious authority among Muslims today. The mass media and the internet have changed the way in which religious teachings are disseminated and indeed how religious disputes are projected and replicated to a vast audience. This is not new but arose two hundred years ago when the ulema began [...]

Nominations for the Fourth Annual Brass Crescent Awards are now up (now that the good folk at the Awards have finished wading through 300 nominations). Voting closes on the 14th December.
It’s the strongest ever British performance this year, although far be for me to suggest that patriotism is the only valid voting criterion! The Brits [...]

It’s that time of year again. The fourth annual Brass Crescent Awards, sponsored by City of Brass and alt.muslim, are seeking nominations for the best of the Muslim blogosphere up until Friday, 9th November. Voting, in ten categories, runs for two weeks from Friday, 15th November.
So let me do a bit of shameless plugging for [...]

This blog is nearly a year old. I wanted to thank everyone for taking the time out to visit and look at the site, for posting comments and sending emails. Despite only averaging two to three posts a month, I’m amazed that the site has had over 400,000 visits since it started, with over 4000 [...]

Orhan Pamuk is not only the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2006), but his difficult novels are widely read in his home country of Turkey for perhaps two reasons: they take the pulse of the country’s concerns and they attempt to do this by rescuing literary narrative from the grip of [...]

When looking for explanations as to why a few British Muslims turn to terrorism, the media commentariat often look to cultural failings. This is particularly true of minority communities, who are then subjected to an extensive cultural test and are usually found wanting. These failings are then presented as drivers towards extremism. This sort of [...]

Most of Britain’s main Muslim leaders signed this open letter to the Prime Minister yesterday:
Protect Civilians wherever they are
Prime Minister,
As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens.
It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at [...]