I Don’t Want to Make You Eat Halal Meat or Wear a Hijab

In the wake of anti-Muslim violence and racist unrest in Britain, a personal plea to stop swallowing propaganda and start seeing each other as human beings

I do not want to convert you to Islam.

I do not want to conquer you. I do not want to enforce Shariah law in Britain. I do not want to make all women wear burqas, force halal meat down your throat, groom your daughters, change your language, erase your culture, turn your churches into mosques, or ban pork and alcohol.

And, for the avoidance of any doubt, terrorism, murder, violence, maiming innocent people and killing children are abhorrent, evil and utterly indefensible.

Yet I am a practising Muslim.

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21/06/2026 3

VE Day Reflections 2025

Are We Learning Anything from the Past?

Yesterday was VE Day. A time for solemn remembrance, for honouring those who fought and fell for our freedoms. A time for reflection. But also – shouldn’t it be a time to stop, think, look at the world around us, and ponder the lessons of the past as crucial to our future survival?

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09/05/2025 0

Pursue the Intangible via the Incomprehensible to the Immeasurable

‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’ Albert Einstein.

He was so right. Now more than ever. Here’s a rambling rant proffering reasons why.

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23/07/2017 0

Grenfell Tower – Horror and Hope

Heartbroken for the victims of Grenfell Tower in London, I’m shocked and appalled at the tragic loss of life, yet consoled by the emerging empathy – it gives us all hope

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16/06/2017 0

The-last-sane-person-in-the-Asylum sort of day…

I’m sad, and more than a little personally gutted as something of a Trekker, to concede that the utopia dreamt up by Gene Roddenberry in the Star Trek universe will never come to be. This is not because Einstein killed the Warp Drive, or because we’ll all end up as scrambled molecules after ill-advised mass Transporter experiments.

It’s simply because the easiest of all the advancements depicted in Star Trek is beyond our grasp. That of course being ‘human evolution’. I’m not referring to the disappointment of not growing an extra pair of eyes in the back of our heads, or developing telepathic abilities, nor even sporting cybernetic implants and robotic limbs.

I mean sociological, conscientious and cultural evolution.

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06/02/2016 0