Explosion in Afghan capital is latest in string of attacks on civilians during Ramadan
A powerful explosion has killed more than 50 worshippers after Friday prayers at a Kabul mosque, the latest of a series of attacks on civilian targets in Afghanistan during Ramadan.
The blast hit the Khalifa Sahib mosque in the west of the capital in the early afternoon, according to Besmullah Habib, the deputy spokesperson for the interior ministry.
Continue reading...Muhammad Razzaq says two armed men tied up and beat his staff and made off with 240 shalwar kameez
Gunmen have stolen more than 200 outfits made for the customers of a Pakistani tailor for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.
Muhammad Razzaq said two armed men barged into his store in the capital, Islamabad, tied up and beat his staff, before making off with 240 completed or near-finished traditional shalwar kameez outfits.
Continue reading...Red Crescent says at least 42 injured at site revered by Muslims and Jews as police fire rubber bullets at youths throwing rocks
Israeli police have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinian youths throwing rocks in the latest outbreak of violence at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, a site revered by Muslims and Jews.
At least 42 Palestinians were injured in the early morning clashes on Friday at Islam’s third-holiest site, the Palestine Red Crescent said.
Continue reading...Mubarak Bala’s case seen as part of a clampdown on critics of religious orthodoxy in a deeply conservative region
A prominent Nigerian humanist has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to blasphemy charges, in a landmark case that has put a new focus on the threats to freedom of expression in the west African country.
Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was sentenced on Tuesday afternoon, two years after his arrest at his home in the northern Kaduna state on 28 April 2020. He was then taken to neighbouring Kano, where calls for action against him had been made by members of the religious establishment in the majority Muslim and conservative state.
Continue reading...Fearing unrest over the ruling, the state government bans large gatherings after the restrictions on headscarves sparked violent protests
A court in India has ruled that wearing a hijab is not an essential principle of Islam, in a setback to Muslim students who were demanding the right to wear the headscarf in colleges in Karnataka, south India.
The Karnataka high court was hearing the petitions of Muslim students who had been stopped in January from entering the government college in Udupi, where they were enrolled, for wearing the hijab.
Continue reading...Minister says women’s march violates Islamic values, prompting counter-events organised by religious groups
More than 1,000 veiled women attended marches to promote Islamic values in cities across Pakistan on International Women’s Day in an attempt to counter pro-gender equality rallies.
In Islamabad and Karachi, well-attended “hijab marches”, organised by religious groups, competed with those participating in aurat – Urdu for women – rallies, which call for an end to systemic discrimination in the country.
Continue reading...Ahead of key Uttar Pradesh elections, state police accused of being ‘mercenaries’ of hardline Hindu nationalist government
According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.
The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day?
Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet.
Continue reading...Women required to attend separate classes and follow dress code at facilities in Kandahar and Helmand as they restart classes for first time since Taliban takeover
Public universities in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan have reopened after being closed for nearly nine months, with some female students joining classes.
Despite calls from education activists and students, universities and high schools across Afghanistan stayed shut after their usual summer break as the Taliban came to power. High schools have since reopened, but only for boys.
Continue reading...The former minister Nusrat Ghani has claimed whips told her she had been sacked for being a Muslim. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory colleagues share their own experiences, from being labelled a terrorist sympathiser to being told to change their name
In 2011, Sayeeda Warsi, then a co-chair of the Conservative party, implored her government to take action over the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry, which she said had become socially acceptable enough to pass “the dinner-table test”.
A decade later, it seems too little has changed. Last week, Nusrat Ghani, the Tory MP for Wealden, told the Sunday Times that when she was dismissed from her ministerial post in 2020, she was told by a whip that her “Muslimness” had been an issue. The chief whip, Mark Spencer, identified himself as the person who spoke to her, but strongly denied her allegations.
Continue reading...Man denied any wrongdoing after pair caught together in conservative Aceh province
An Indonesian woman has been flogged 100 times in Aceh province for adultery while the male involved, who denied the accusations, received just 15 lashes.
Ivan Najjar Alavi, the head of the general investigation division at the East Aceh prosecutors’ office, said the court handed down a harsher sentence for the woman after she confessed to investigators she had sex outside of her marriage.
Continue reading...People juggle work and Friday prayer as country switches to Saturday-Sunday weekend
Employees and schoolchildren juggled work and studies with weekly Muslim prayers on the first ever working Friday in the United Arab Emirates, as the Gulf country formally switched to a Saturday-Sunday weekend.
Some grumbled at the change and businesses were split, with many moving to the western-style weekend but other private firms sticking with Fridays and Saturdays, as in other Gulf states.
Continue reading...Decision to close public hammams – most people’s only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country’s mounting crises
The Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.
The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country’s bitterly cold winters.
Continue reading...There is concern that the country’s divisive anti-Muslim political discourse will seep into the union’s institutional policymaking
France has taken over the rotating EU presidency for the next six months, an opportunity the president, Emmanuel Macron, will no doubt use to nudge Europe towards his goal of greater “strategic autonomy” in the world. Some in Brussels worry that hotly contested presidential elections in April could interfere with France’s EU presidency before a key conference on the future of Europe delivers any results. It’s not reassuring that Macron’s decision, temporarily, to fly the blue and gold EU flag at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris has already drawn the fury of far-right and conservative election candidates.
But many European Muslims are concerned about the French stint in the EU chair for another reason: they fear that France’s divisive anti-Muslim political discourse will seep dangerously into EU policymaking.
Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs
Continue reading...The pandemic has seen borders close and divisions widened. But in almost all aspects of life, humanity will only thrive by coming together
During the pandemic, the nations of the world set about energetically strengthening borders around themselves, and within themselves, as states restricted entry. During the early lockdowns, according to the UNHCR, 168 of the world’s 195 countries partially or entirely closed their borders. This hit refugees particularly hard. “Movement is vital for people who are in flight,” said Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR. “They save their lives, by running.”
The virus knows no borders; it is the ultimate globalist. Covid-19 put an end to the idea that the 19th-century European nation state is the political arrangement we should all aspire to. The nation state is an outdated concept, and ill serves the present emergency. The rich countries have frozen immigration. But when people can’t move, they also can’t earn. Global remittances – money sent back to their families by people working abroad – which amount to four times all the foreign aid given by the rich countries to the poor ones – have gone down two years in a row. Poor countries will be poorer.
Continue reading...Almas Nizamidin, whose wife has been sentenced to seven years in prison in Xinjiang, says a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is not enough
What Almas Nizamidin knows of his wife’s arrest and disappearance is second-hand: the harried reports relayed by his relatives as it rapidly unfolded.
The police came for Buzainafu Abudourexiti at her home in Ürümqi as she was travelling to a doctor’s appointment on 29 March 2017. Her family called, she cancelled her appointment and hurried home.
Continue reading...US lawmakers have ramped up pressure on China in a bid to censure the country’s treatment of the Muslim minority
The United States has unleashed a volley of actions to censure China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority, with lawmakers voting to curb trade and issuing new sanctions on Beijing.
The United States has been ramping up pressure on China amid a crop of disputes, with president Joe Biden’s administration a day earlier targeting producers of painkillers that have contributed to America’s addiction crisis.
Continue reading...Fatemeh Anvari was told her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, which bars some public servants from wearing religious symbols
The removal of a Canadian teacher for wearing a hijab in the classroom has sparked widespread condemnation of a controversial law in the province of Quebec, which critics say unfairly targets ethnic minorities under the pretext of secularism.
Fatemeh Anvari, a third-grade teacher in the town of Chelsea, was told earlier this month that she would no longer be allowed to continue in the role because her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, a law passed in 2019.
Continue reading...The far-right French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour appeared to be put in a headlock by a protester at his first campaign, days after he formally declared his candidacy in a video highlighting his anti-migrant and anti-Islam views.
Videos online appeared to show Zemmour being grabbed by a man at the heated rally near Paris on Sunday, during which anti-racism activists were also reportedly attacked. He was later reported to have suffered slight injuries
Continue reading...Government accused of having emboldened extremists after lynching of Sri Lankan in Sialkot
A mob in Pakistan tortured, killed and then set on fire a Sri Lankan man who was accused of blasphemy over some posters he had allegedly taken down.
Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who worked as general manager of a factory of the industrial engineering company Rajco Industries in Sialkot, Punjab, was set upon by a violent crowd on Friday.
Continue reading...A new stage production aims to tell the Sufi poet’s story beyond his aphorisms – and challenge assumptions about Islam and the Middle East in the process
He is everywhere and nowhere. The words of Jalal al-Din Rumi are found on sunset images pasted on Instagram and coffee mugs sold on Etsy; his poems have been featured in recordings from Madonna and Coldplay and he is reputed to be the bestselling poet in the US. Rumi’s observations and aphorisms on life may be endlessly cited – “You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop” – but few in the west know him as anything more than a bearded Sufi mystic.
“Rumi has become a mystical, almost deified figure,” says Nadim Naaman. “The reality is that he was the opposite of an untouchable deity.” Naaman, a British Lebanese singer, actor and writer, has collaborated with the Qatari composer Dana Al Fardan to create Rumi: The Musical. “Our approach was to take the man out of the myth,” says Al Fardan, “and to present him as human being.” This is the second time Naaman and Al Fardan have brought a beloved Middle Eastern poet to the London stage. Their 2018 show Broken Wings, which is returning to London in the new year, was based on a novel by the Lebanese poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. It was the success of that production that convinced them there may be an appetite for a musical that delved into the life of Rumi.
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