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	<title>Yahya Birt</title>
	<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com</link>
	<description>Musings on the Britannic Crescent</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:06:31 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Dilemmas of Authenticity and Belonging</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=204</link>
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		<title>New Biography of Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The first full biography of Abdullah Quilliam, appointed Sheikh-ul-Islam of the British Isles by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1893, has just come out. It’s a fascinating read and exhaustively researched and written in an accessible way by Ron Geaves, Professor of Comparative Religion at Liverpool Hope University. It can be ordered online from Kube [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=192</link>
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		<title>Defining Islamophobia today: the state of the art</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The emergence of “Islamophobia” as an English-language neologism could be dated to around 1991, although earlier occurrences can be found in Edward Said’s essay “Orientalism Reconsidered” in 1985 and from the early twentieth century in French.[1]  This emergence coincided with the moment when Muslim minorities become politically active in Western Europe, in the midst of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=175</link>
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		<title>Don&#8217;t repeat this mistake</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
It may be tempting fate to say so, but the conviction of the ringleaders of the airliner plot last week represents the end of an era. MI5 believes that al-Qaida has no &#8220;semi-autonomous structured hierarchy&#8221; in the United Kingdom, and there have been fewer &#8220;late-stage attack plans over the last 18 months&#8221;.
Back in the 90s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=172</link>
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		<title>The personal isn&#8217;t always political</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Conversion – like my own to Islam – is a deeply personal experience, even if it can have political ramifications.
I&#8217;ve been reluctant to write about my own conversion to Islam in 1989: I&#8217;ve always regarded it as a personal matter, as something hard to write about without coming across as deluded or pretentious, given the widespread [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=162</link>
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		<title>How not to deal with al-Muhajiroun</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=154</link>
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		<title>Global Britons, Muslim Futures</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It is now a commonplace to observe that “Britishness” and “Muslimness” have become polarised: by seeking definitions against “the Muslim threat”, “true” Britishness, it is felt, can be retrieved.
Yet the evidence shows the opposite: most of Britain&#8217;s ethnic groups emphasize both religious and national identities together, a trend most noticeable among Muslim Britons. Polling usually [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=149</link>
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		<title>Just how big a threat is &#8220;Islamic&#8221; terrorism?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How big a threat is “Islamic” terrorism (note the scare quotes) to Europe? It’s a valid question, and not one that we should assume we already know the answer to.
Since 9/11, politicians have had a ready answer and portray terrorism as the primary, existential threat, even in an age of global warming. For Tony Blair [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=148</link>
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		<title>The next ten years: an open letter to the MCB</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As the Muslim Council of Britain marks its first decade, it seems an appropriate moment for reflection. As the largest Muslim umbrella body, it still remains primus inter pares among an increasingly large alphabet soup of representative bodies. The British Muslim Forum, the Sufi Council of Britain and British Muslims for Secular Democracy have all [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=146</link>
			</item>
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		<title>The Long March of the Conservatives</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For the first time since 1997, the Conservatives suddenly look to be on the electoral march. A resounding victory in the local elections condemned Labour to third place and its lowest share of the vote since 1918: the Conservatives gained ground in Labour heartlands in Wales and the North, capped by Boris Johnson&#8217;s win as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=145</link>
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