Worldcrunch
BAGHDAD – Everywhere in the Iraqi capital is an off-limits “red zone” for Westerners except for the American invasion’s legacy known as the “green zone.” This central quarter in Baghdad, accessible only by the right identification document or special permission, is actually a sort of privileged prison for those with valuable blood. But I have […]
An unofficial market of “seat saving” is reportedly making waves in Saudi Arabia: female faithful are paying good money to women who can save them spots for prayer at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. The “seat savers” technique is to use clothing, purses, and even their own children to save seats […]
CAIRO – From the popular upheaval of the Arab Spring to bloody wars to expanding global trade relations, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu faced no shortage of challenges in his 10 years at the helm of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that ended last month. On the most basic bureaucratic level, Ihsanoglu can point to the rebranding of […]
KILIS — Mohammad, a jihadi rebel from northern Syria, is describing his wedding night. His family had insisted on a non-religious ceremony. At the reception, just as his relatives began to dance and celebrate, he went home. “The music made me uncomfortable,” he says. Believing in the same religious tenets that have led extremists to outlaw music and singing in jihad-held areas of Syria, Mohammad chose to spend the night at home with his sister. On this day, in Kilis, across the border in Turkey, the 35-year-old former salesman is running late, but makes a courtesy call to say he’s […]
Just three years after wave of democracy, Egyptians appear ready to trade in freedom in order to have more stability. Is Cairo set to usher in a new era of pure military rule?
CAIRO — In the sunlit reception area of Jana Dan International School in Cairo’s Maadi neighborhood, golden-framed certificates line a prominent wall. Next to international accreditation and state inspection documents is a notice to staff: “Please refrain from discussing politics at school.” Through the halls and into a large courtyard flanked by the swimming pool […]
A Rafsanjani return?The former diplomat and Tehran-based commentator Sabah Zanganeh wrote in an item published Dec. 22 in the reformist daily Aftab-e Yazd that the former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, considered Iran’s great “pragmatist” politician, could help engineer a rapprochement with regional rival Saudi Arabia, for the “trust” he inspired among Iranian and Saudi officialdom. Zanganeh […]
HOMS — I still remember April 18, 2011, when it seemed all of Homs turned out for the funeral of 12 people. Tens of thousands of men and youths exited the grand mosque of Homs, the coffins held aloft amid the multitudes. The procession headed to al-Kateeb cemetery, one of the most revered burial grounds for Muslims in the city. Twenty years ago, Homs residents were forbidden from burying their dead in al-Kateeb cemetery; it was running out of space and the final few places were reserved for only the most prominent sheikhs. They would be the lucky few accorded […]
Eid al-Adha is a central holiday on the Muslim calendar, celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. Muslims all over the world go to mosque for prayers and thank Allah for their blessings. Those who can afford it then sacrifice a sheep, or sometimes a goat, as a reminder of Abraham’s obedience and […]
LONDON – Double-parked cars causing a traffic jam, mothers in a rush, a supervisor watching the gate: the usual end of a school day in South London. Except that the school is Iqra VA, a Muslim primary, and all the mothers are wearing the veil. Five of them even wear a niqab, the full veil […]
Take a tour of what the world has been saying this week…
To counter Islam, conservative groups are twisting the ideas of the Enlightenment writer famous for his advocacy of freedom of religion.
QOM – “What are you going to do there?” asks an Iranian youth I meet in Tehran. “For us, that’s not even Iran.” My destination is Qom, 120 kilometers south of the capital. On this day, at the end of March 2013 (year 1392 according to the Persian calendar), it is snowing. I arrive at […]
A Muslim-American writer recounts the days after the Boston Marathon attack. No doubt, parents in the UK are having similar conversations right now.
Unable to live up to the first wave of optimism, the uprising in the Arab world is nonetheless destined to change history.
UNITED NEWS OF BANGLADESH (Bangladesh), AP Worldcrunch DHAKA – At least 15 people have died in and around the capital of Bangladesh on Monday in clashes between police and Islamic hardliners demanding that the nation implement an anti-blasphemy law. Eight people, including two policemen and a paramilitary soldier, were killed during clashes in Kanchpur just […]
MUNICH -The opposite of good is well-intentioned. And the present conflict between Femen activists and Muslim feminists demonstrates how a “well-intentioned” action can fail so miserably. Femen activists are supposed to be the good guys – the ones who stand for freedom and emancipation. To spread their message they protest topless – naked but not […]
Authorities worry for the safety of the mostly young sign-ups, but also the risk that they return home radicalized — and set on striking targets in Europe.
AFP, BBC, IRRAWADDY (Burma), REUTERS Worldcrunch MEIKTILA– Burmese sectarian violence has turned deadly, as angry mobs rioted in the streets and at least five people have been reported killed in the central city of Meiktila. The BBC cites a death toll of 20 by Friday morning, though the Myanmar government has only confirmed five fatalities […]
DIE WELT (Germany), HURRIYET DAILY NEWS (Turkey) Worldcrunch AMSTERDAM – Turkey has launched a campaign to retrieve Turkish children that have been adopted by gay and Catholic couples in European countries, reports Hurriyet Daily News. Currently at the center of the debate is nine-year-old Yunus, the child of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands, who is […]
In Egypt’s capital, “D.capuccino” is the latest sign of piety since Mubarak fell. In separate sections for men, women and families, it serves up Italian coffee and “pure, Islamic values.”
Italians teach locals in Burkina Faso both the recipe for pizza, and the formula for a successful small business. Is this how foreign aid is transformed into sustainable development?
AL-MASRY AL-YOUM (Egypt), AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, AL-QUDS AL-ARABI, AL-ELAPH (UK), AL-MUSTAQBAL (Lebanon), AL-RAI (Jordan), GULFNEWS.COM (UAE) Worldcrunch Pope Benedict XVI shocked his Church with the announcement last week that he would resign from the papacy at the end of the month. The reaction in the Western press was, not surprisingly, enormous: newspapers, television and Internet sources […]
DIE WELT (Germany) AL ARABIYA (U.A.E) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Call it the, “high-five heard “round the world.” The simple sporty gesture, exchanged between German Parliament Member Claudia Roth and Alireza Sheikhattar, the Iranian Ambassador to Germany, has set off a wave of controversy. Through a spokeswoman, Roth, co-chair of Germany’s Green Party, said she reacted […]
ISTANBUL – Four heavily made-up, peroxide blondes are sitting on a talk show set. In broken German, they’re trying to prove that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong. It’s a particularly bizarre bit of religious propaganda – but since 2011 creationist theories have been packaged this way for Western viewers and broadcast by the […]
GOMA – Young Muslim men in the Democratic Republic of Congo are less interested in having several wives than their fathers were. Facing rising prices and feuds over inheritance, the new generation doesn’t see how the benefits outweigh the costs of having multiple spouses in the same household. As for the women of the current […]
TAWASOL, (Saudi Arabia), AL-ARABIYA (UAE), AL MOHEET (Egypt) Worldcrunch RIYADH – A Saudi cleric says babies and young girls should be covered from head to toe as a way of protecting them from sexual abuse. Sheikh Abdullah Mohamed Daoud made his statement on the al-Madj satellite station in October last year, but the video was […]
AFP, FRANCE 24 (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch BAMAKO- Two weeks after the start of the French military intervention in Mali, the Ansar Dine Islamist militant group has split into two, with the dissident faction calling for peace negotiations. The dissident group is calling itself the Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA) according to France 24. In a […]
BERLIN – Asir’s life was preprogrammed. The North African Muslim was to be trained to be a jihadist in a Palestinian terrorist camp. There he would learn how to build bombs and kill non-believers. But just before he was due to leave, he started to have doubts. “I realized that there were several versions of […]
Exclusive investigation: The terror network in Syria includes dozens of European members, and wants to get its hands on Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
CAIRO – On December 5, violent clashes raged for hours between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi, after the latter attacked a sit-in outside the presidential palace by protesters rejecting the constitutional declaration and a snap referendum. A total of 49 people were captured, beaten and kept overnight in makeshift holding cells as their […]
LA PROVENCE, LE PARISIEN (France) Worldcrunch AVIGNON – A French mother is to appear in court after dressing her three-year-old son, whom she named Jihad, in a t-shirt with the words “I am a bomb” written across his chest. A nursery-school teacher alerted the police when her pupil came into school wearing the t-shirt, with […]
New rules on school uniforms in Turkey will now allow young girls to wear headscarves while attending religious vocational schools. The move comes as a part of a new regulation that will no longer force children in state schools to wear secular school uniforms. Children will be able to wear their own choice of clothes, […]
-Essay- As someone who writes and lectures about women and gender in Islam, I am often asked if women had any role in the making of the Islamic tradition. Happily, the answer is always yes. There were in fact many prominent women in the early history of Islam. At the top of the list would […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia) Worldcrunch MOSCOW – The government in Chechnya, Russia’s Caucasian republic that has tried twice to gain independence in bloody wars of secession, has decided to start teaching the basics of Islam in preschools, Kommersant reports. Chechnya is predominantly Muslim. The initiative comes directly from the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadirov, who has already appointed […]
-Analysis- PARIS – In Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist, the shepherd Santiago travels to the ends of the earth seeking a treasure that was close by all along. And sometimes, too, we find the key to understanding what is happening in our country today by reading about things far away. Two scholarly articles published last […]
BONN – “You have to use violence to defend Islamic values?” asks the judge. “Yes, of course,” Murat K. replies. Five months after he attacked police officers with a knife, the 26-year-old Salafist came clean in the courtroom: it was his duty, he said, to wound the police officers. The officers in question are veterans, […]
LE MONDE, AFP, LA LIBÉRATION (France) Worldcrunch France is bracing itself for repercussions after satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad Wednesday. Le Monde reports that a small Syrian organization called Syrian Freedom Association has filed a legal complaint against the French weekly. It accuses Charlie Hebdo of “throwing oil on […]
LE MONDE, i-TELE (France), RTL (Luxembourg) Worldcrunch PARIS – Riot police have been sent to guard the offices of controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in preparation of their publication of cartoons mocking Islam’s Prophet Muhammad Wednesday. The French weekly yesterday announced it would publish satirical cartoons of the prophet in this week’s edition. The […]
MOSCOW – Just this past August, there have been three attacks on Muslims in a small region of Dagestan – two attacks on Imams and one attack on a Shiite mosque. The attack on the mosque was the first attack on Shiites in the Northern Caucasus. It appears that the fight between Sunnis and Shiites, […]