3 blog reactions to http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2007/06/not_surprisingly_the_awarding.html

Akbar Ahmed mentioning you foaming at the mouth during your interview, Salman. The implication, however, is clear. His conversion is an embarrassment. Only someone “deranged” or “off-balance” would convert. I remain in complete agreement with Inayat Bunglawala’s view that Rushdie, who supported the invasion of Iraq, is “pompous, heartless and self-regarding”. Rushdie might be a technical virtuoso when it comes to writing English, but what does such a vain, empty heart have to say that

, but Dr Katme is also a member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain’s (MCB’s) Health and Medical Issues Committee. The MCB has been accused of being a reactionary Islamist organisation by Panorama, but have been attempting to improve their public image after being eventually frozen out by the Home Office. Although I am against the idea of self-selecting organisations being seen to represent an entire community, as though they are homogeneous unthinking whole, the MCB would seem to have a problem with

beliefs to be held in such regards with respect to the law; but in liberal democracies, religious beliefs are generally not deemed worthy of legal protection from scrutiny or even ridicule — doing so would lead to the problems highlighted by Eteraz, Bunglawala and Austrolabe [1, 2]. It might be worth nothing that there is some tension here with Burke’s criticism of abstracted rights as laid out in his attack on the French Revolution. Burke attacked the