Mick Hartley

Pakistani journalist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, interviewed at Spiked:

The term Islamophobia is duplicitous. I would even say it’s deceitful. Islamophobia means an irrational fear of Islam. But Islam is an ideology. It should be as open to critique as any other.

There are at least 12 Muslim-majority countries that impose the death penalty for blasphemy. Plenty more Islamic countries have harsh sentences for criticising Islam. For the UK to in any way limit criticism of Islam, and to hide behind the concept of human rights as the term Islamophobia does, is an insult to the many victims of Islam in those countries. I think it’s very concerning that many British Muslim groups have offered their full-throated support for Labour’s Islamophobia definition….

Denmark has made it illegal to burn the Koran. Sweden criminalises this through other laws. The problem is, once you tell any particular community that it will be accommodated if it reacts violently, it will only provide more motivation to act violently. The more space you cede to anyone upholding Islamist values, the more space they will demand. It’s never going to be enough. The question is, how much of your world are you prepared to give away?

It's worth revisiting Pascal Bruckner, from 2011:

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world…

On a global scale, we are abetting the construction of a new thought crime, one which is strongly reminiscent of the way the Soviet Union dealt with the "enemies of the people". And our media and politicians are giving it their blessing. Did not the French president himself, never one to miss a blunder – not compare Islamophobia with Antisemitism? A tragic error. Racism attacks people for what they are: black, Arab, Jewish, white. The critical mind on the other hand undermines revealed truths and subjects the scriptures to exegesis and transformation. To confuse the two is to shift religious questions from an intellectual to a judicial level. Every objection, every joke becomes a crime.

And my take:

A fundamental principle of Western thought is the separation between a person and their beliefs. This is not a fundamental principle of Islamic thought. Quite the contrary: born a Muslim, you die a Muslim. The notion that you might change your mind is so alien that the punishment for apostasy – in theory, if not necessarily in practice – is death.

The charge of Islamophobia deliberately obscures that separation between a person and their beliefs. It accepts the Islamic vision of an immutable union of person and religion. We should refuse to accept those terms. A person's ethnic origins may be Pakistani, Arab, Kurd, European, whatever, and to criticise or abuse them for that is racist and unacceptable. Their beliefs, whether in Islam, Scientology, UFOs, or any other ideology, creed or cult, is an entirely different matter, and should be open to criticism, debate, scepticism, up to and including ridicule. That's the way we do it, and that's what we should be defending. Worship who or what you want, wear what you want, think what you want, but don't expect to be spared from being offended by the opinions and beliefs of others. The charge of Islamophobia is, precisely, an attempt to make criticism of Islam illegitimate – and that attempt should be resisted. We should be free to criticise Islam just as we criticise Christianity, socialism, capitalism, or any other system of beliefs.

How's North Korea's bold reforestation plan going?

Not so well, sadly:

According to a Daily NK source in Ryanggang province recently, the provincial branch of the Ministry of Land and Environment Protection marked Arbor Day on March 14 by launching spring reforestation activities, ordering local authorities to plant saplings in designated zones.

However, these efforts are largely superficial.

“Most reforestation takes place along roadsides or visible mountain slopes, and the work stops once the assigned saplings are planted,” the source explained. “People typically just dig a shallow hole, drop in the sapling, and cover it with dirt.”

The minimal effort extends to aftercare, resulting in extremely low survival rates for the trees.

“While planting the required number of saplings is reported as success, less than 10% actually survive,” the source noted. “Most are left unattended and die, while others are pulled up for firewood.”

The situation is further complicated by the fact that many reforestation zones overlap with small, privately farmed plots, creating resentment toward the government’s tree-planting campaign. Residents frequently remove newly planted trees to grow crops instead.

“It starts with people quietly removing a few trees, but eventually entire reforested areas are cleared,” the source explained. “Many saplings die anyway due to poor planting and lack of maintenance, but people worried about their own survival uproot the rest to plant corn and other crops.”

Despite deploying forest management and protection officers, authorities struggle to prevent people from clearing trees for farmland.

“No matter how much the officers try to enforce the rules, they can’t stop desperate locals determined to grow food,” the source said. “The officers themselves are struggling to feed their families, so they’ve largely given up on protecting the saplings.”

Ah well. It's the thought that counts.

This.

Access to toilets is undeniably important.

But it is perhaps the least important aspect of the Supreme Court ruling.

So I wish people would talk more about the other aspects.

Prisons, hospital wards, sports, rape refuges etc. are all more important in my view.
And the…

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) April 28, 2025

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"Prisons, hospital wards, sports, rape refuges etc. are all more important in my view. And the existence of sexual orientation. Which is based on biological sex.

"We intervened to secure legal recognition of the rights of lesbians – and of the existence of sexual orientation. Which would have become “meaningless” – in the Supreme Court’s words – if the ruling had gone the other way.

"Please don’t let interviewers focus exclusively on toilets. Of course there is not going to be a “toilet police”.

"Decent people respect the rule of law. Decent men respect women’s boundaries."

Another look at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 exhibition currently on show at Somerset House. This time, photographer Owen Davies with LIGHT/MASS, and some US brutalism:

LIGHT/MASS is an ongoing series of alien urban landscapes found in cities across the United States. Owen Davies moved to New York City from England during the spring of 2020, days before the city shut down due to the global pandemic. Like many during that time, the photographer walked and cycled through empty streets, passing the time and getting a sense of his new home. He became fascinated with the strange-looking buildings he would stumble upon, looming suddenly when turning a corner. They felt like distinctly otherworldly structures, alien to the surrounding architecture and unobserved by passersby. Davies began seeking them out, deliberately looking for buildings designed by architects and planners who envisaged a bright utopian future for those living in America’s large cities.

Asphalt Green – New York City, NY.

The Bathhouse at Jacob Riis – New York City, NY.

The Egg, Albany, NY.

Tribeca Synagogue, New York City, NY.

Terrace on the Park – New York City, NY.

Former Armstrong Rubber Building – New Haven, CT.

Queens Plaza Mall, New York City, NY.

Department of Housing and Development Building, Washington DC.

Markel Building, Richmond, VA.
[Photos copyright Owen Davies]

Website here.

Hadley Freeman interviews actor John Lithgow:

After playing Roald Dahl at his most antisemitic in the phenomenal play Giant, which has transferred from the Royal Court theatre to the West End, John Lithgow thought he knew everything about being a vilified author. Then it was announced that he will play Dumbledore in HBO’s forthcoming ten-season Harry Potter series.

“I hadn’t intended to show you this. I’m not even sure I should,” Lithgow, 79, says, adjusting his black-rimmed spectacles as he scrolls through his phone. He shows me a text from a friend, a link to an article titled An Open Letter to John Lithgow: Please Walk Away from Harry Potter. The article claims that JK Rowling is “anti-trans” and “attacked trans kids directly, saying ‘There are no trans kids. No child “is born in the wrong body”.’” Meanwhile, over on Lithgow’s normally cheerful Instagram account, there are endless comments from people telling him the same thing — that to act in something connected to Rowling is analogous to donning a Ku Klux Klan hood.

Lithgow is, commendably, unmoved.

Meanwhile, Lithgow is still puzzling on something. “No one complained when I agreed to play Dahl, but I’ve received so many messages about JK Rowling. Isn’t that odd?”

Well, at the risk of sounding glib: antisemitism is no big deal nowadays in the right progressive circles, though "anti-Zionism" sounds better. Being anti-trans, though? It doesn't get any worse than that.

A BMJ editorial welcoming the Sullivan review – Sex and gender should not be conflated in medical data:

Accurate data are essential to clinical care, research, and health service planning. But in some data sets, the NHS and the wider medical profession have conflated the key demographic variables of sex and gender. This can decrease the integrity and reliability of data and potentially compromise healthcare. A government commissioned independent review led by Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London, was published in March 2025. It concluded that, for good practice, the “default target of any sex question should be sex”; and questions about gender identity should be asked separately.

Sex (male or female) is determined by gametes at conception with phenotype influenced by chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. A few people are found to have one of a small number of clinically recognised variations in sex development (VSDs) after expert investigation. These individuals nonetheless have a sex, either male or female. Gender, by contrast, is a mutable social construct, defined as “the norms, behaviours, and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl, or boy … and varies from society to society and can change over time.”

The Sullivan review set out to examine how data and statistics are gathered in respect to the recording of sex and gender. It found that sex, gender, and gender identity have become conflated in research and clinical datasets in recent years. This may have occurred because gender has been used as a synonym for sex, with some clinicians, researchers, or administrators misunderstanding the distinctions. But some individuals and organisations have lobbied for gender identity to be collected instead of, not in addition to, sex with deliberate merging of categories….

It's not complicated. 

In which obsessed trans activist India Willoughby continues to attack and insult JK Rowling – and gets a better response than he deserves.

It seems literally impossible for certain trans activists to grasp that not everything is about them.

The only rape crisis centre in Edinburgh prior to the opening of Beira’s Place was run by a trans-identified man who publicly told potential service-users they would be… pic.twitter.com/EvPKTIWkAJ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 26, 2025

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Full text:

The only rape crisis centre in Edinburgh prior to the opening of Beira’s Place was run by a trans-identified man who publicly told potential service-users they would be ‘challenged on their bigotry’ if they didn’t agree he was a woman. Meanwhile a ‘non-binary’ man subsequently convicted of rape, and found by the sentencing judge to harbour serious hostility towards women, was permitted to access the centre’s services.

Trans-identified men in Edinburgh were better served than women when it came to accessing support after rape or sexual assault. Beira’s Place, which I founded and fund in its entirety, gives women a choice. The female-led, female-centred model of support is provably preferred by most female survivors. We know for a fact that some of our service-users didn’t seek help before we opened, because they didn’t want a male providing their therapy, or for men to be accessing what they needed to feel was a completely safe space. However, if a woman was happy with a male support worker, or with males also using the service, she could of course choose the alternative rape crisis centre.

Some men, trans-identified and not, disagree that even the most vulnerable and traumatised women should be allowed to exclude men from rape crisis centres, yet many women see a male-free space and service as the last or only chance of putting their lives back together. It takes immense courage even to pick up the phone to access help after rape. Yet, even at their worst moment, these women told by activists like Willoughby that their priority should be centering his feelings, pandering to his ‘identity’ and pretending that they don’t recognise his narcissism and aggression as a quintessentially male response to not being given what he wants, by women.

The simple truth is that no decent male, however they identify, would ever seek to breach the boundaries of women whose sense of self and safety has been shattered by their experience of male violence or rape. 98% of sexual predators are male. 88% of sexual crime victims are female. Beira’s Place exists because I saw an unmet need and the fact that we’ve been so busy since we’ve opened proves, not that women hate trans-identified men, but that this is where women feel safe enough to deal with trauma they might otherwise have had to carry with them forever.

As has been noted, many trans supporters (Maggie Chapman, Owen Jones) have been shouting ever since the Supreme Court ruling that women should have been spending their time and money on support for VAWG (Violence against Women and Girls) causes rather than being nasty to trans people. Well Rowling did just that – and they're furious about it. 

This is who Hamas calls ‘Press.’

This is who the @BBCNews uses to present ‘facts.’

It’s one thing to be played, it’s another to be paying for it. pic.twitter.com/D84mdJ4iC1

— Josh Howie (@joshxhowie) April 26, 2025

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From the Telegraph:

A journalist who appears prominently on the BBC’s Arabic channel to report from Gaza called for Jews to be burned “as Hitler did”, it can be revealed.

Samer Elzaenen has appeared on BBC Arabic more than a dozen times since the conflict erupted following the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel….

In a Facebook post in July 2022, he stated: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything.”

Elzaenen has also appeared to call for a repeat of the Holocaust, stating on Facebook in May 2011: “My message to the Zionist Jews: We are going to take our land back, we love death for Allah’s sake the same way you love life. We shall burn you as Hitler did, but this time we won’t have a single one of you left.”

He's not the only one.

Ahmed Qannan, another regular BBC Arabic freelance contributor, appears to have expressed his hope that Israelis wounded in a shooting near a Jerusalem synagogue, which claimed the lives of seven civilians on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2023, would also die.

Writing on Facebook in response to a friend who stated “We want to see some throats cut”, Qannan replied: “Don’t give up on your ambition”. Qannan also described a 26-year-old Palestinian who killed four civilians and a police officer in a series of shootings in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak in March 2022, as a “hero”.

As the article goes on to state, these people aren't direct employees of BBC Arabic: they're freelance, which means the Beeb can continue to use them while denying direct responsibility. The wider point though, which the BBC refuses to acknowledge, is that any reporter operating inside Gaza must be Hamas-approved – otherwise they wouldn't be reporting and would most likely be shot. These two just happened to be a bit careless with their social media.

Janice Turner in the Times:

At last Saturday’s demonstration against the Supreme Court ruling, a burly, gravel-voiced, 50-something man in a baby-doll nightie was interviewed about lavatories. “If I walked into a men’s toilets like this, I’m just asking for trouble,” he said. “It only takes one obnoxious idiot.”

Maybe he shouldn't dress up in his fetish gear.

How is he treated in the ladies? “A woman wouldn’t do it. End of.” He’d just used female loos at Waterloo station and “none of the women batted an eyelid when I walked in. I’ve got no problem with going in the ladies. They’ve got no problem. So I’m not going to stop.”

Really, it’s a mystery why women in an enclosed space would avoid the eye of a broad-shouldered, tough-looking geezer in fetish gear. It’s truly a triumph of entitlement and narcissism to read such silence as approval, but if women are mere non-player characters in your life’s exciting video game, why would you clock their watchfulness, unease or fear?

It's not the violence these men are worried about in the men's toilets: it's the ridicule. They wouldn't be attacked: if anything they'd be jeered. 

It's the same old story. Men are afraid of being laughed at; women are afraid of being killed.

Useful update from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – An interim update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment.

Key information