As a practising Muslim I don’t believe that covering a woman’s face is something that Islam requires of her. I also don’t believe it’s fair to say that people who find the face veil threatening or intimidating are simply being racist or Islamophobic I don’t even believe that covering the face is particularly conducive to the country we live in. But then neither is the idea of banning it! writes Rabiha Hannan
The general reader can choose from thousands of books published on the war, in our publication Do Mention The War we have produced our own bookshelf with 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction books we recommend,Which books have you learnt most from? Share your recommendations at #WWI books
There could well be at least 10 babies born today at St Mary’s Hospital in London, of which one boy or girl born will be a future king or queen. They will be among around 373 babies born in London today, and perhaps 2,268 babies born across the United Kingdom. These babies born on 22 July 2013 offer a snapshot of the Britain that the young prince or princess will grow up with, writes Sunder Katwala.
I am a child of the NHS, which celebrates its 65th birthday this week. I took my first breath in an NHS hospital, like many millions of Britons. And, if it hadn’t been for the NHS, I wouldn’t have come to exist at all. I was born British, in a Yorkshire hospital, in the spring of 1974.
Thirty years earlier, my parents had been born some 4,000 miles apart. It was the NHS that brought them both to Britain, writes Sunder Katwala.
With the recent staging of Yellow Face at London’s Park Theatre this summer, a spotlight was cast on the Chinese community in the UK. Yet beyond that the Chinese community remains largely hidden from our public conversation, with opinion formers talking of it as the “silent” community. Is that a sign of successful integration or of problems that go under the radar, asks Jemimah Steinfeld.
Too many titles handed the killers in Woolwich the megaphone they craved. Those who quietly reject the offer of hatred and division deserve to be heard too, writes Sunder Katwala.
Britain is a fairer and less racist country than it was when Stephen Lawrence was murdered 20 years ago. But there is good sense, too, in the public wariness of over-claiming how much has changed, says Sunder Katwala.
20 years on, we can now see that Stephen Lawrence’s death has come to play an important symbolic role, Sunder Katwala writes.
The inclusive pride so many Londoners felt in its confident claim to be one of the world’s great global cities was one of the resonant themes of the capital’s success in hosting the 2012 Olympics. Yet the release of the 2011 census, shortly before Christmas, generated a more anxious discussion of diversity. There was also a familiar polarisation – on one side, those who celebrate difference and diversity as enriching the cultural life of the capital, versus those who feel deeply unsettled by the scale and pace of change which they have seen in their lifetimes, writes Sunder Katwala.