I was reading today that ""The Coordination Committee of Major Mosques and Islamic Centres" have announced..." and having never heard of this huge organisation before, I decided to google it and it linked me to East London Mosque.

Now that suddenly seems to be less spectacular. (if I am wrong and this is actually a big organsition or something, please correct me.)

I wonder if this is in the long tradition of spectacularly exaggerated names that many people use?

There is the "European Islamic Centre" that UKIM are opening in Oldham, and many asian business can't help but adding worldwide, continental or international to their names.

Recently I have been taking an interest in the country that is Turkey. It is quite a fascinating place for a number of reasons, not least because less than a century ago, it was the leader of the Muslim world in the form of the Ottoman empire.

I have many unanswered questions on it - some that I can put into words, such as "why did the Arabs rebel and join the British against" but there are many many more that are less easy to ask (let alone answer). Just a warning - the rest of this blog post is a "brainfart" of ideas and thoughts hopefully structured in a semi-cogent manner, however it may not make any sense at all or may be entirely wrong. Feel free to correct me.

The front cover for Time Magazine for Volums 176 No 6 to be launched on 9 August 2010

It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan.

(See managing editor Richard Stengel's message to readers about the cover.)

ok, this morning I listened to a little bit of radio - Radio 5 live on 909 Medium Wave. The topic was pets. Harmless stuff... or so I thought.

First of all it started off sensibly and they were talking about pet healthcare insurance etc and more or less mentioning the same issues that the Americans were having with normal healthcare insurance.

But then they moved onto pampering the pets and this was... freaky?

Pretty interesting clip I think:

">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LIpAxjPt9U]

(I saw it here)

I was just reading on the aggregator a story by Islam in Europe about the response in Denmark to a non Muslim pop star called Medina.

She was born in Chile and apparently it is a popular name there.

Muslims are deeply offended that someone called medina will go on stage to perform her song and dance and to tittilate her audience. How dare the woman desecrate the name of the second holiest city in Islam!

Except that even if her name was from arabic, the word madina in arabic means "city".

the city was originally called Yathrib and after the hijrah it was known as "Madina tun nabi" meaning "city of the prophet".

If pretty pretty pictures can speak a thousand words, what does that say about motion/video?

I am sure a lot of you will have been in this situation where there is someone about to edicate you about something Islamic... and you may even be interested and then the person starts...

"Nahmaduhu wa nusalleee"

and you rarely get past this bit stilla wake as it is so... ordered and pretentious and fake. then there is the contents that drone on and on, pretending to be atlreast 50 years older than the person is as if that privides gravitas and importance... allowing you to have a quick nap until some moron shouts "Takbeer!" making you jump up as if someone had attacked you...

What if there was another way?

The Revival has always had a tag line "voice of the Muslim Youth!" - but what does it mean?

Does it mean that The Revival is the only voice of the muslim youth, or that 'Ed is the voice of the Muslim Youth? What about me?

To answer it about me - I really doubt that I am. More there is no single voice of the Muslim youth, but many indivitual voices from many young Muslims and combined they are the voices of the Muslim youth

Something that has become apparent recently is that there are some seriously commited Muslims who have strong opinions - some I agree with and defend, others that I will disagree with and maybe even attack.

Were you not the leader of the party that was most sane on the issue of Palestine? Were you not for an arms embargo on Gaza?

Has that changed since your alliance with the Conservatives? You seem to have sold your soul.

Where is the Prime Minister to state the terrible nature of this assault?

And how about condemning this act insted of Mr Hague being forced to deplore the loss of life? Mahdi Hassan explained it well:

Clock this then!

How many rows did you manage to clear? How many levels?