Yesterday was St. George’s day, and in case you didn’t know he is the patron saint of England and the national flag is named after him. But who was he and should we care?

You may be surprised to learn that St. George was not English; He was born in 280 AD in Cappadocia which is in modern day Turkey, his father was what we would describe today as Turkish and his mother was a Palestinian from the area of Lydda in Palestine.

I have received countless calls over the last few days from people asking why MPACUK oppose the mega-mosque and why we were aligning ourselves with people like the Sufi Muslim Council and Ed Hussain. So I’ve written this article that might clarify and explain MPACUK’s position on this issue.

Dear MPACUK,

I have read the article on your website. I appreciate some of your points and also the fact that some people possibly associated with the jamaat may have exercised violence against you and your organisation - this was not acceptable even though you and your organisation may have been provocative and touching on their emotions. I do not think that the violence you mention is representative of the Tablighi Jamaat and most likely to represent the individuals who carried it out - shameful of them.

We had a call from a respected Muslim Leader and reader of this site - Dr Sufi, president of the Islamic Association of North London who was unhappy with the use of the word hypocrite in the title. He assumed it was being used in the Quranic form of being a munafiq. MPACUK were not using the term in this context but in the more widely used context of a person or group of people who say one thing and do another as is clear in the article.

In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron. [...] he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, [...] the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital...

We've received some emails asking what MPACUK's stance is regarding the construction of the Mega-Mosque in East London. To answer this, we've republished a pod-cast by Zulfi Bukhari from last summer.

MPACUK have never shied away from exposing the hypocrisy and special interests of the rich and powerful. In this Podcast, the Mega Mosque and its proposers are taken to task for building a 'white elephant' whilst the urgent needs of the Ummah are ignored and asks the questions 'If Tabligui Jamaat want Muslims to support them, what are they willing to do to gain that support?

The London Divans is a series of televised gatherings in which a panel of experts will engage in dialog with a public audience drawn from all walks of life. MPACUK spokesperson, Catherine Heseltine, will be amongst the panelists at the first event, tackling the question: Does British Islam need liberation from male leadership? The event will be held at the London School of Economics, Friday 25th April, 6:45pm - 8:30pm.

But then they have every right and every reason to. Here's Hamas's foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, in the Washington Post, paying his respects to the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and putting in a word for his own long suffering ghetto dwellers: