The burkini is seen as a symbol of integration, says its designer. Here lifesaver Mecca Laa Laa wears a burkini on her first patrol at North Cronulla Beach, Sidney, Australia, in 2007   Over the past eight years, Aheda Zanetti has sold 700,000 swimsuits to clients all over the world. Her designs, costing from $80 […]

Rumour and referendum in Egypt By M.R. | CAIRO  15 Jan 2014 THREE hours’ drive from the clamour and crush of Cairo, a quiet village has not been spared the political shockwaves emanating from Egypt’s capital. With its residents politically polarised between a minority that supports the Muslim Brotherhood and a majority that backs the […]

By Editorial Board  14 Jan 2014 EGYPT’S MILITARY regime is taking a major step this week toward installing an autocracy more repressive than any the country has known in decades. Citizens are being summoned to the polls to vote on a new constitution that exempts the army, police and intelligence services from civilian control and allows these […]

Dissent within the fold. “This message is resonating with the rising generation,” says Brog. By McKay Coppins  14 Jan 2014 WASHINGTON — Figures with deep roots in America’s religious right have launched a quiet effort aimed at pushing evangelical Christians away from decades of growing loyalty to Israel and toward increased solidarity with the Palestinians. The campaign […]

By Hooria Mashhour 14 Jan 2014 Hooria Mashhour is Yemen’s minister for human rights. December 12 was supposed to be a day of celebration for the al-Ameri family. A young bride traveled to her wedding with her relatives in Bayda province, Yemen. But in a few dark seconds their celebrations were eviscerated. A U.S. drone fired at the […]

As defense minister, he presided over disaster in Beirut, and as prime minister, over disengagement, not peacemaking By Gershom Gorenberg  13 Jan 2014 In his death, Ariel Sharon has suddenly reentered our lives, like a long-repressed memory. Between his final breath and his funeral, on Monday afternoon, politicians of nearly all Israeli camps and the […]

By Mira Bar Hillel   13 Jan 2014 Sharon deliberately deceived his Cabinet. He devastated Beirut, leaving 300 dead in a day and looked on approvingly as fascist militias entered refugee camps to rape, murder and torture thousands of Palestinians In February 1983, a judge-led Commission of Inquiry found Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli defence […]

By Steven Brooke   27 Dec 2013 Since Egypt’s July 3 coup, its new rulers have used arrests, police and military raids, and intimidation to try to shape the country’s post-Mohamed Morsi political order. But more quietly, yet no less vigorously, the government is also engaged in an attempt to repress the social and charitable […]

Film stars have been speaking from a flawed script. One of the first western reporters in the country points to the awful reality. By Derek Howden 28 Dec 2013 George Clooney in North Darfur, Sudan, in 2008. When violence erupted two weeks ago in the world’s youngest country, one of the first voices to speak […]

22 Oct 2013 A Dutch politician who once helped produce a film depicting Islam as evil and extreme has performed the Hajj after declaring his conversion to the religion earlier this year. Arnoud van Doorn has said he bitterly regrets his actions and wants to make amends by producing a film showing Islam in a positive […]

Household survey records deaths from all war-related causes, 2003 to 2011. By Dan Vergano   15 October 2013 War and occupation directly and indirectly claimed the lives of about a half-million Iraqis from 2003 to 2011, according to a groundbreaking survey of 1,960 Iraqi households. The violence peaked in 2006 and 2007, say public health […]

Polls show U.S. Jews are attached to Israel – but their critical stance on Israel’s policies means they’re beginning to consider disengaging. By Ori Nir  13 Oct 2013 Two recently published surveys should make the Israeli government pause and ponder the impact of its intransigent policies on its staunchest supporters, American Jews. One is a survey […]

By Yoginder Sikand 29 Oct 207 Maulana Salman Hussaini Nadvi, Dean of the Faculty of Shariah at the renowned Nadwat ul-Ulama madrasa in Lucknow and member of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, is a senior Indian Muslim scholar. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, he talks about various aspects related to madrasas in contemporary India. […]

It’s hard to believe that the founders of a U.K. nationalist group infamous for its anti-Muslim street brawls are really defecting to the forces of ‘anti-extremism’ when their close ally is Pamela Geller. By Daniella Peled   11 Oct  2013 It was a sensational news story. Two leaders of a far-right nationalist anti-Muslim protest faction […]

By Brian Whitaker  5 Oct 2013 The Raba’a massacre and Operation Schmooze On August 14, hundreds of Egyptians died when security forces  violently dispersed sit-in protests against the military takeover that ousted President Morsi. One week later, hundreds of Syrians died in the chemical attacks near Damascus. Both these massacres were on a similar scale, and […]

By Web Desk / Aroosa Shauka   6 Oct 2013 The gathering outside the Lahore church.   LAHORE: The Muslim and Christian communities came together during Sunday mass in a show of solidarity in Lahore. Hand in hand as many as 200-300 people formed a human chain outside the St Anthony’s Church adjacent to the District […]

Precious few political parties have spoken out against the military or its assault on the Muslim Brotherhood.  Sharif Abdel Kouddous  1 October  2013 Khaled Dawoud worked hard to remove Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, from office. As the spokesperson for the National Salvation Front, a loose coalition of non-Islamist parties and groups formed […]

By Nancy A. Youssef    3 Oct 2013   CAIRO — Three months after the Egyptian military ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Egypt now resembles the kind of police state whose oppressive policies gave rise to an iconic Arab Spring. Nearly three years and many protests, elections and governments later, it seems only the […]

We are not so far from a time when Jews were treated as undesirables, when right-thinking people preferred to ignore what was happening to them. We must not ignore the plight of those – the illegitimate, the rootless, the “illegal” – who fall on the wrong side of the line today. By Daniel Trilling   […]

By Mehdi Hasan   1 Oct 2013 Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith has launched an outspoken attack on the Daily Mail for its founder’s support for “the Nazi cause”, in the wake of the newspaper’s relentlessly hostile coverage of Ed Miliband’s late father. Speaking at the Huffington Post UK’s fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Tuesday, the […]

By Shaheen Sattar  30 Sept 2013 And neither should anyone else who decides to dress in a way that is subjectively unnerving to another person. The ridiculous subjugation of the veil as a cloth of oppression and regression truly highlights that Muslim women are not taken seriously in contemporary society. They are recognised with their […]

By FATMA DİŞLİ ZIBAK, İSTANBUL   1 Oct 2013   A group of headscarved women in Balıkesir are seen holding a demonstration to demand complete freedom to wear headscarves in the public sector in this 2012 file photo.  Members of Turkish civil society have welcomed partial freedom granted to covered women who want to work in […]

Maybe the sanctions really worked and Iran is reconsidering? But no, it’s automatic: Rohani is lying. Let’s bomb. By Gideon Levy  29 Sept 2013 This is how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Iranian President Hassan Rohani’s speech at the UN General Assembly: The speech was full of hypocrisy. Tehran is playing for time. Netanyahu […]

 By Khin Maung Win   2 Oct 2013 Totally blackened pillars stand among debris of a burnt building Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2013, in Thandwe, Rakhine State, western Myanmar. Terrified Muslim families hid in forests in western Myanmar on Wednesday, one day after rampaging Buddhist mobs killed a 94-year-old woman and burned dozens of homes despite […]

29 Sep 2013 The Taheedul Islam Girls High School scooped the accolade for its astonishing success in terms of academic results A faith school in Blackburn has come top of the class in a new league table of secondary schools. The Taheedul Islam Girls High School scooped the accolade for its astonishing success in terms […]

By Stephen M. Walt  26  September 2013 Sometimes you read a news story that brilliantly illuminates just what is wrong with the basic U.S. approach to national security these days. Case in point: today’s New York Times story headlined “U.S. Sees Direct Threat in Attack at Kenya Mall.” Of course we do. When was the last time […]

By Tim Stanley  24 Sept 2013 We’ve heard very little from Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI since his retirement, but he’s made a surprise return to public life. Benedict has written a letter to the atheist mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi, covering subjects from the sex abuse scandal to evolution – and extracts have been released by Italy’s La Repubblica […]

By Colum Lynch  24 Sept 2013 President Barack Obama, presented world leaders at the United Nations with an image of America as a reluctant superpower, ready to confront Iran’s nukes and kill its enemies with targeted drone strikes, but unprepared to embark on open-ended military missions in Syria and other troubled countries. That, he hinted, […]

By Dr H.A. Hellyer  24 Sept 2013 Almost precisely seven years ago, Britain was having this same discussion. A public official, Jack Straw, the then Leader of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, decided that it was appropriate for him to bring up the issue of Muslim British women wearing the face-veil/niqab in a commentary […]

Dilma Rousseff’s scathing speech to UN general assembly the most serious diplomatic fallout over revelations of US spying By Julian Borger, New York   24 Sept 2013   Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff speaks at the United Nations general assembly.    Brazil‘s president, Dilma Rousseff, has launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, […]