Morocco was among the first Arab and Muslim countries to approve the birth-control pill. Now women activists are fighting for the right to choose to have an abortion.
Tag: islam
Despite the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, religion still dominates the public sphere. Against the odds, the founders of a new party are fighting for the separation of mosque and state.
For the past 50 years, religion has been a key element in Moroccan diplomacy with its African neighbors. Now it’s part of the fight against Islamic terrorism on the continent.
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Muslim And Happy In … Brazil
The world’s largest Catholic country has a long-established and steadily growing Muslim population. With some rare exceptions, Brazil is a model for integration of Islam into a mixed population.
KATARAGAMA — A full moon is shining over the traditional Pooja celebrations here in southwest Sri Lanka. By the light of candles, people offer flowers, fruit and incense. Above waves the Sri Lankan flag, with a leaf in each of its corners to represent the four religions on the island nation: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. But this idyllic setting in Kataragama is deceiving. The peaceful coexistence between religions in the country came crashing down last June 15 when hundreds of anti-Muslim Buddhists, led by a dozen monks from the extremist organization Bodu Bala Sena, stormed into Dharga Town, a […]
Germany’s first Sharia-compliant bank wants to revolutionize the finance sector of the European economic juggernaut. Investment in businesses related to alcohol and gambling are prohibited, as is the practice of charging interest, and Muslim and non-
The anonymous author has penned a new book, but lives in fear of reprisal for her writings that celebrate female sexual pleasure and castigate “Arab arrogance” and subjugation of women.
GORNJA MAOCA — In Sarajevo, you come to realize that all the essential things in the world have been affected by war, or rather, by the circumstances of war. You realize the economy’s upheaval, the general misery and, above all, the turmoil in each individual life: embarrassment, uncertainty, anxiety. “It’s like being in a prison […]
By a twist of history and weight of geopolitics, Greek law recognizes the authority of Sharia in settling civil matters for the country’s Muslim minority. One widow is fighting to end this European anomaly.
It’s not important whether Islam is “a part of Germany,” as the country is debating. Fascism once was utterly German. The real question is, will Muslim leaders accept reason and freedom as the central values of society?
Those killing in the name of the Muslim prophet are following derivative ancient texts, second-hand accounts, not the Koran.
One month after the nation-changing attacks on the French satirical magazine, a look at the daily life of a Muslim religious leader of good faith.
Latifa Ibn Ziaten’s son was a victim of the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban killings, widely considered a pre-cursor to the recent Paris attacks. She’s putting her pain to good use.
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — The Turkish authorities all condemned the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet for publishing selections from Charlie Hebdo. From the president to the prime minister, from ministers to parliamentary deputies, the government was united in condemning the Turkish newspaper. Insulting the sacred is unacceptable, they said. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda led demonstrations at mosques around the country, […]
ISTANBUL — Instead of discussing the Paris massacres and the ties between Islam and terrorism, Turkey has instead been focused on “Islamophobia.” Someone not following the news could mistakenly believe, based on the debate here, that there had been a violent attack against Muslims in France instead of a jihadist terrorist attack against journalists, Jews […]
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To Be A French Muslim Right Now
PARIS — The terror attack against Charlie Hebdo has deeply shaken Muslims in France, and their dread is twofold. They fear not only for their own safety but also that the shooting might make it even more difficult for them to take their place in the national community, that it will fuel the rising Islamophobia […]
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Your Prophet Is Not My Prophet
A French-Algerian writer launches a loud and clear message for whoever carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine.
A group of young people of all religious backgrounds are living proof of religious tolerance, as they volunteer to clean Jakarta houses of worship, whether they be Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian.
Radical Islamists zero in on young people in the West who are lonely and disaffected by modern life.
A somewhat unusual event was held over the weekend in a park in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, called “I want to touch a dog.” The idea was organized through Facebook in order to introduce Muslims to dogs, and more than 800 people attended, Asia One reports. Many came to see and be near the dogs, and […]
Claire, who raised her daughter near Paris as an atheist, has seen the teen fall in love with a deeply conservative young man from Egypt. The dream is to escape to live under Sharia law.
One slipped away, the other killed his way out of ISIS after witnessing too much brutality from the jihadist group. But as they tell their dramatic stories, sharp differences emerge.
WUPPERTAL — The god you’ll discover if you become a Salafist is not a god who will coddle you. That’s a message zealot Pierre Vogel sends out loud and clear over the microphone when he’s doing his village tours to promote the “perfect sharia.” Germany’s best-known convert to Islam used to be a professional boxer […]
TEHRAN — Every evening, Youseph walks by the mosque in Tehran’s Fatemi Square. Before heading towards his house, he looks up at the portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that are on the walls of the building. Then he crosses the street and descends the hill to where he lives. […]
–Commentary– BERLIN — There are photographs of Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul, taken in the 1960s, that show elegantly dressed women sitting in street cafés. There are similar photos from the period shot in Ankara, Cairo, Damascus and Karachi. A half-century later, comparable scenes are nowhere to be found in many of these cities. Ankara is […]
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Segregating The Sexes In Tehran
Tehran’s city government is trying to separate male and female employees within its offices, a move parallel with moral norms favored by Iran’s Islamic government but likely to irk less conservatie segments of the population. This would not be the first such move in Iran since the 1979 revolution. There have been previous attempts to […]
An impassioned defense of a fellow Algerian-born writer who dares to think for himself in the face of Arab identity politics and the eternal Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
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Saudis To Build Mosque Near North Pole
IQALUIT — A wealthy Saudi couple will soon begin building a mosque in one of the least hospitable corners of the globe: near the North Pole, in Iqaluit, Canada. The mosque, which will be the northernmost mosque in the world, will face extreme Arctic weather conditions, including lows of -40 degrees Celsius. The town of […]
BAGHDAD — Ten years ago, this was a park for children. The young boys of Adhamiya, a Sunni district in Baghdad, used to come here to play soccer. Now, this bare patch of land on the bank of the Tigris river is a makeshift cemetery. A forest of tombstones grew during the darkest years of […]
The construction of Pakistan’s next tallest building in Karachi is seen by the country’s Hindu minority yet another attack in this Muslim-majority country of 180 million.
QASYAR — Ahmed is wearing a Barcelona soccer jersey with Argentine superstar Lionel Messi’s name on the back. Rasheed has Rodrigo Palacio’s from Inter Milan, while Samad is sporting the Chelsea shirt of Brazil midfielder Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Junior. While their heroes compete in the World Cup on the other side of the world, […]
Egypt’s ostensible secular president, al-Sisi, seems to be guilty of the same sin for which he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood: using religion in politics. What will it mean for the people?
How did a city known for its ethnic and religious mix roll over for a band of Islamist radicals? In the wake of the ISIS conquest of Mosul, the spectre of it spreading to the capital looms.
As Islamists gain ground in Iraq and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeals for help, the U.S. says it will only help if he first resigns. But it’s not the only reason why his regime may fall.
The Saudi Embassy in Tokyo is closely following the case of a Saudi citizen studying in the country, recently arrested for breaking four 300 year-old Buddha statues at a temple in the capital. The embassy has reportedly condemned the statues’ destruction as “contrary to the principles of Islam,” and has reached out to the temple’s […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Let’s be honest, Syria’s June 3 presidential election was nothing but a giant government-orchestrated masquerade. Bashar al-Assad will remain president of Syria, a country whose population has been largely decimated, as the three-year-long conflict has turned the country into a battleground for international jihadists from Shia and Sunni Islam, with the direct […]
DIYARBAKIR — When Aykan Erdemir, a parliamentary member from Turkey’s Republican People’s Party, tried to visit the website of a Christian church located in the country’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir, he was surprised to see that the parliament’s filtering system recognized it as pornography. The preacher of Diyarbakir Protestant church, Ahmet Guvener, said he thought […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — There’s a cold civil war in Turkey. An event like the mining catastrophe and its 301 victims could have united the deeply split country, emotionally. But not even the grief of so many Turks could bring supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan together. Turkey is split into at least […]
CORDOBA — Back in 1984, UNESCO included Spain’s Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on its World Heritage list. Thirty years later, the site that tourist guides describe as one of Andalusia’s architectural masterpieces — a symbol of the golden age of the Umayyad civilization and of the “concord” between religions — now represents conflict. Though the exceptional […]
ISTANBUL — The current state of Turkey offers little cause for comfort. • The claims of corruption and theft multiply with each passing day. • Those same claims are about to be swept under the rug. • The judiciary is effectively finished. • Limitation of basic freedoms is on the rise. • Authoritarianism is alive […]