Shiraz Maher

The culture of denial is so pervasive and prevalent in Pakistani politics that the government is now unable to govern the tribal areas. That much was clear yesterday when the Pakistani Taliban shot 14 year-old Malala Yousufzai in the tribal province of Swat as she walked home from school. Yousufzai is a prominent campaigner against religious extremism and promotes women’s rights, including their access to education. ‘She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol’, a spokesman for the Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said when claiming responsibility for the attack. ‘She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas’.

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets this week to protest inflation and the collapse of Iranian currency on international markets. Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar closed for business with many of its merchants leading the demonstrations. This will worry the government because traders there are normally seen as bridging the gap between clerics and Iran's influential mercantile classes. The atmosphere inside the Bazaar is a useful barometer of Iranian political discontent. During the abortive Green Revolution in 2009 which challenged Ahmadinejad's re-election, merchants from the Grand Bazaar offered only muted support. In 1979 they swung decisively behind the Islamic Revolution and helped unseat the Shah, having previously secured concessions from the monarchy a century earlier.

Expect to hear Barack Obama talking about ‘economic patriotism’ in tomorrow’s first Presidential debates. The idea is a simple one: that American’s should keep their money within the United States, place their deposits in American banks, and pay the full measure of their taxes. It’s providing an effective way to undermine Romney’s complex financial arrangements which place much of his money in offshore tax havens. By doing so, Obama claims, he is proving himself a poor patriot. In a new campaign advert, the President argues: 'It's time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class.

For years he was the face of radical Islam in Britain - a living caricature of the 'mad mullah' — the hook handed, eye patch wearing cleric Abu Hamza. Famous for holding congregational prayers on the streets of Finsbury Park and railing against the West, the era of Abu Hamza is now finally drawing to a close Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights refused a request by Abu Hamza and four others to have their case referred to its Grand Chamber. This means they have now exhausted all their avenues of appeal through the Strasbourg courts and will soon be extradited to the United States. The Home Office has already told the BBC that Abu Hamza will be removed from the country 'as soon as possible'.

Militants operating in the Sinai breached Israel’s borders for the second time in six weeks on Friday. One soldier was killed during the latest incursion, prompting demands that Egypt do more to reign in groups operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Mohammed Mursi acted swiftly last time militants crossed into Israel, but insists his hands are now tied. Tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai make the peninsula hard to govern while the terms of the 1979 peace agreement make it is a demilitarised zone. The absence of an effective military presence there has allowed Islamists to use the area as a springboard for attacks against Israel. It would not be unprecedented for Egyptian forces to enter the area. After last month’s attack, Egypt sent its army into the area with Israeli permission.

England have just beaten Afghanistan in the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup currently being held in Sri Lanka. In the end, it was a comprehensive victory for Stuart Broad’s men but how wonderful it is to see cultural and sporting life returning to a country where such ‘frivolities’ were outlawed by the Taliban. This is Afghanistan’s second appearance at a major cricketing tournament and follows Rohullah Nikpai’s efforts in the Olympics a few weeks ago where he won the country’s second ever medal.

One of the most significant revelations from last week’s furore surrounding ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ film has been the way Western governments reacted to it. The White House condemned the film as did the American embassy in Cairo. That much is understandable. To condemn a film as offensive, silly, or provocative is not to undermine the principles on which it was produced. Indeed, the White House made a point of stressing the First Amendment which enshrines the right to free speech. Yet, behind the scenes, that’s precisely what they were busy undermining. Officials lobbied Google (which owns YouTube) to remove the film from its servers, only to be rebuffed. Yesterday the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

All roads lead back to Salman Rushdie. At least, that’s what the Iranian Ayatollahs would have you believe. Following last week’s furore over a poorly made YouTube video which mocked the life of the Prophet Mohammed, the Iranians are baying for Rushdie again. Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, who leads a semi-official foundation to honour the memory of Ayatollah Khomeini, has upped the bounty for Rushdie’s assassination by $500,000. The overall pot now stands at $3.3 million. What has Rushdie to do with the poorly produced film of a convicted Egyptian fraudster? Well, nothing – but then clerical fascisms seldom concern themselves with the trivialities of reason. Sanei believes that Rushdie set the trend for insulting Mohammed, a supposed pioneer of new insults and ridicule.

I took the opportunity yesterday to catch up with the BBC’s new comedy ‘Citizen Khan’. Focusing on a Muslim family based in my hometown of Birmingham, it lampoons the trials and tribulations of the self-appointed, self-important, and self-obsessed Mr Khan. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of British Muslim communities will recognise the basic truths on which the programme’s characters are premised. Alia, daughter of the eponymous hero, seems to have provoked the most controversy. Alia is a shrewd young girl, doting before her parents but defiant behind their backs. There are complaints she portrays a disrespectful daughter, affronting not just her myopic parents but also a stylised vision of ‘British Islam’.

It is not uncommon for new leaders of new nations to flex their muscles. And in spite of its millennia of history as a nation, this is precisely where Egypt now finds itself. It has hosted its first free and fair democratic elections, and, for the first time, has a civilian occupying the Presidency. In this new nation, reborn for the umpteenth time, Mohamed Mursi is busy showing off the Brotherhood’s sinews. He landed in Tehran today, a move the Ahmadinejad government had touted as a diplomatic coup. No Egyptian leader has visited the country in more than three decades, and relations have been little more than frosty at the best of times. But as I suggested on Coffee House last week, Mursi was not headed there to prostrate himself before the Ayatollah's authority.

Trying to read the tea leaves on Islamist politicians is notoriously tricky. What else could explain why so many Middle East observers have misinterpreted Mohammed Mursi’s decision to visit Iran later this month as confirmation that Cairo's Islamists are seeking closer union with Tehran? These fears are misguided. Egypt has not had any official diplomatic relations with Iran for more than thirty years and Mursi’s visit will not change that status quo. He won’t be conducting a state visit but will instead be attending a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group formed to promote the interests of developing nations during the Cold War. Egypt currently holds its rotating presidency. The trip has been on the cards for months.

The British state’s curious relationship with radical Islam appears to have gone full circle. I've just found a picture on an internet forum affiliated with al-Qaeda showing Abu Baseer al-Tartusi carrying a rifle in Syria. Al-Tartusi is a little known cleric who was granted political asylum in London and who gave Islamic lectures in Tower Hamlets until relatively recently. Now he is in Syria, leading a group of jihadists in the war against Bashar al-Assad. A pair of British and Dutch journalists were recently kidnapped and then released by jihadists operating near Idlib. Although blindfolded throughout their detention, they reported that some of their captors had British accents. It was the first indication that British jihadists might be fighting in the conflict.