Islam
Veronica Lee
It’s an accepted truth that Chris Morris is a comedy genius. Now the word "genius" is so overused in some quarters as to be rendered meaningless, but in Morris’s case it's a richly deserved description; he created or co-created some of the funniest, cleverest and most original comedy on British television, including The Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam. Not a bad CV, even if it also contains the rather less amusing Nathan Barley. So what of his feature-film debut, Four Lions, which he directed and co-wrote with Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (of Peep Show fame)?Well it has the Morris trademark of a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
On the face of it, The Infidel should be a hoot. The screenwriting debut of comic David Baddiel, one half of two of the cleverest comedy duos of the past 20 years (Newman and Baddiel, Baddiel and Skinner), and starring stand-up comedian Omid Djalili, it tells the story of a Muslim who discovers after his mother’s death that he was adopted and his birth parents were Jewish. (Let’s overlook for one moment that a similar scenario was given a very funny treatment in 1992’s Leon the Pig Farmer.) The Infidel, directed by Josh Appignanesi, could mine an endless seam of tasteless - offensive, even - Read more ...
william.ward
One of the most serious crises facing the Arabic-speaking world in recent years - but which has received precious little comment both in the Middle East and internationally - has been the serious decline in literacy and the art of reading. A United Nations report published in 2008 showed that the average Arab reads a mere four pages of literature a year. Compare that to Americans, who devour a median 11 books annually, and the British who clock in at eight.In an area which boasts many of the richest countries on earth, basic literacy is a mere 75 per cent (compared to Europe’s 99 per cent) Read more ...
Jasper Rees
For a number of years I used to live opposite Abu Hamza. You didn’t see him much. I remember a Mercedes spilling devoutly robed football fans who had come to watch the game round his place when Iran played the USA in the 1998 World Cup. After 9/11, the street would occasionally fill with swooping fleets of police vehicles. Once they decanted a squad of space-suited forensics looking, presumably, for incendiary devices. His family is still there, living next door to John Hutton, until the other day the Minister of Defence. Try putting that into a script.Britain has a bit of history in the Read more ...
terry.friel
Rising spectacularly from the warm turquoise waters of Doha Bay, the building which is probably I.M. Pei’s final and perhaps his greatest work, the iconic Museum of Islamic Art, symbolises the cultural arms race among the Islamic Emirates strung out along the Gulf, on the flank of Big Brother Saudi Arabia.Pei, now 92, journeyed through the Muslim world in search of the inspiration to be able to reflect its artistic traditions. The result is an austere cubist design - the crowning level a minimalist limestone version of a woman’s veiled face that catches the changing light of the sun. On Doha’ Read more ...