By Asif Akhtar

Slowly, the trend of diplomacy seems to be setting in on this "War on Terror", moving away from the gruesome Bush Doctrine that said so clearly "we don't negotiate with terrorists". Not only has the Obama Administration changed the original mission of eradicating all "Talibanised" elements, it seems to have instructed its Af and Pak counterparts to do the same.

Ever since its formation last year, the English Defence League (EDL) has insisted it is not racist and doesn’t have a problem with ordinary Muslims, just radical extremists. Guramit Singh is a British-born Sikh and EDL activist who will address the EDL’s demonstration in Stoke this Saturday to try and show British Asians that the group is neither racist nor anti-Muslim.

But as Secunder Kermani discovered, scratch beneath the moderate surface and a very different picture of the EDL’s Asian poster boy emerges – one of vitriolic rants against Muslims and insults aimed at the Prophet Muhammad.

By Asif Akhtar, cross-posted from Dawn

Pakistan’s recent appearance in the infamous US ‘countries of interest’ list, which isn’t exactly the list of most favoured nations, has brought the country’s international reputation to an all-time low. A fun Google experiment has been going around the blogosphere lately to see what popular Google searches say about certain things. Apparently typing in “Pakistan is…” reveals exactly how bad our public image has been lately.

By Chaminda Jayanetti

They call it the art of the possible. In any given scenario, a government cannot just wish away imperfections and invent a perfect world. Its first job is to deal with what’s in front of it. Working with British Muslim community groups is no different in that respect. It’s just taken the British government a long time to work it out.

By Laurie Penny

Across the country last week, thousands of women caught the bus to work only to be informed by a prominent poster that 'Career Women Make Bad Mothers'. The slogan was selected to demonstrate the success of outdoor advertising - in this case, its success was in shaming and offending the millions of women across Britain who work for a living.

The Daily Mail has news that a bunch of immigrants are demanding changes to the law to accommodate their every want and desire - and have even taken to the streets to protest about it.