Worldcrunch
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 […]
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 […]
LVIV — There’s a commotion in Room 312 of Lviv’s social services department, where over 50 Crimean Tatars are crowded into the small space — families with children, older married couples, students. All of them fled Crimea in March and headed for this western Ukrainian city. They’re now in the concrete block near St. George’s […]
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 […]
BANGUI — The motorbike stops abruptly. “If the French don’t want to help us, al-Qaeda will,” the teenager shouts before driving away. All around him, this road of the Begoua neighborhood in north Bangui — the Central African Republic’s capital — is covered in bundles full of the belongings of hundreds of people waiting to […]
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?
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 […]
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 […]
Unable to live up to the first wave of optimism, the uprising in the Arab world is nonetheless destined to change history.
XINJIANG.GOV, TIANSHAN.NET, XINHUA (China), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch BACHU – Twenty-one people, including police officers and community workers, were killed in violent clashes in the ethnically-divided Kashgar region in the western Chinese Xinjiang Province, reported local officials on Wednesday. The incident occured on Tuesday after three community workers found “suspicious individuals and knives in the home […]
THE IRRAWADDY (Burma), HRW (USA), RADIO AUSTRALIA Worldcrunch RANGOON – A new report by NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) published on Monday says there is evidence of government complicity in crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against Burma’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority. Since June 2012, more than 220 people have died in sectarian fighting between […]
AP, BBC, THE IRRAWADDY (Burma); REUTERS Worldcrunch RANGOON – Thirteen children were killed in a fire at an Islamic building housing orphans in Burma’s biggest city early Tuesday morning. Sectarian violence has shaken Burma, also known as Myanmar, during the past week and the authorities were quick to blame the blaze on an accidental electrical […]
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 […]
KFAR KAMA – Bent down in his field in this lower Galilee town, Amjad Shami points out the countless underground tunnels dug by voles. Three years ago, he says, these rodents destroyed his entire harvest. Shami says he continues to try to fight them with pesticides, which do little more than poison his land, infect […]
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 […]
SITTWE – If it weren’t for the flattened gaps in the standing rows of houses, Sittwe would seem like any typical Burmese city, with its decadent colonial façades. But the isolated blocks, leveled to the ground, are the price to pay for the apparent quiet: A brutal urban war begun last June that emptied the […]
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 […]
-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 […]
LE MONDE, OUEST FRANCE (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – French far right leader Marine Le Pen weighed in on the Prophet Muhammad caricatures and anti-Islam film protests in an interview published by Le Monde on Friday. When asked by the French newspaper what she would do if she was elected president, the Front National party leader […]
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 […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS, BBC (UK), SANA (Syria) Worldcrunch Anger against the West is spreading throughout the Muslim world as further reports of attacks on the UK, German and US embassies develop Friday afternoon. Following Pope Benedict XVI’s arrival Friday for a three-day trip to Lebanon, anti-Western protests amassed in the country’s second-largest city Tripoli. […]
REUTERS, SKY NEWS, BBC (UK), AL JAZEERA (UAE) Worldcrunch Sectarian violence in Lebanon escalated Tuesday night, claiming at least 10 lives, Reuters reports, as the Syrian crisis spills over to its neighbors. Old tensions between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in Lebanon’s second city Tripoli have flared up due to the continuing Syrian conflict, which has […]
JAKARTA GLOBE, ANTARA NEWS (Indonesia), AAP (Australia) Worldcrunch JAKARTA – A new Islamic social networking site will be launched in Indonesia in November, and will offer “better protection” for young Muslims from “harmful content” reports the Jakarta Globe. According to the Indonesian newspaper, the Beta version of the site is currently being tested by 1,000 […]