British award-winning writer Karen Armstrong gave an interesting interview to discuss her views on Islam, the Quran, and religion-related topics. The interview, which appeared earlier this week in El Mundo, highlights how the writer-activist’s belief that Islam is subject to…
Category: Interfaith
ISNA Responds to the 2015 State of the Union Address
Germany’s Muslims call for protection after ‘far-right terror plot’ arrests
Call comes after arrest of 12 men believed to have been plotting attacks on mosques Muslim communities in Germany have called for more police protection after the arrest of members of a rightwing extremist group that is believed to have been plotting large-scale attacks on mosques around the country…more:TheGuardian
Leaked records expose China’s Xinjiang camps
Newly leaked Chinese records have revealed for the first time the system by which hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been monitored and detained in heavily fortified internment centers across Xinjiang. According to the leak, Chinese citizens can be sent to the camps for reasons such as growing beards, owning passports, or having too many children and their release may depend on how well their family behaves. CNN’s Ivan Watson reports.
Inside China’s Crackdown On Muslim Uighurs
France Schools to Replace ‘Mother and Father’ with ‘Parent 1 and 2’ and Putin
French schools are to replace the words “mother” and “father” with “parent 1” and “parent 2” under an amendment to a law passed this week.
Supporters of the change say it will stop discrimination against same sex parents but critics argue it “dehumanises” parenthood, is “ugly” and could lead to rows over who gets to be “parent 1”…more: Telegraph/ RT
and: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia would not legalise gay marriage as long as he was in the Kremlin. He made clear he would not allow the traditional notion of mother and father to be subverted by what he called “parent number 1” and “parent number 2”. Read more: .todayonline.com
Trump Threw Weighty Refugee Decisions to Local Government, With Painful Results
In a gray-walled, institutional hall usually reserved for prosaic debates over traffic and town budgets, Mohamoud Abdirahman rose from the audience last month and approached a panel of five town councilmen sitting in judgment.
Civil war had forced his family to flee their native Somalia in 1991, when he was a child…..MORE: NYTMES
‘Admit Your Mistakes, Repent’: China Shifts Campaign to Control Xinjiang’s Muslims
KASHGAR, China—Hundreds of discarded metal bed frames lie jumbled in a grassy lot here behind a recently emptied re-education center for ethnic-minority Muslims in northwest China. Red stickers on them read: “Recognize your mistakes, admit your mistakes, repent.” Chinese authorities say everyone has completed their studies at such sites—which Beijing describes as vocational schools. Rights groups and Western governments say that about a million people, most of them Uighurs, have been detained in dozens of such centers across……more: READ THE FULL STORY
The Times view on Trump’s plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians: Middle Eastern Promises
… On both sides of the wall that politicians insist is not a wall, which marks a border which they also insist is not a border, faith in a future Palestinian state that might exist in harmony with an Israeli one has foundered. Now comes Donald Trump, claiming he can break the deadlock with “the deal of the century”. He is almost certainly wrong…more: thetimes
AS THE LEBANON UPRISING HITS 100-DAY MARK, PROTESTERS ALLEGE TORTURE BY SECURITY FORCES
ALI BASAL AND Samer Mazeh had just left a protest on the Ring Bridge in central Beirut on the night of November 14. Suddenly, they were swarmed by a small group of unidentified men. Within earshot of the packed bars on the popular Gemmayzeh Street, one of the men tried to arrest Mazeh as Basal demanded to know who they were. Minutes later, an army vehicle arrived and a man claiming to be a military intelligence officer jumped out….MORE: theintercept.com
Rohingya crisis: The Gambian who took Aung San Suu Kyi to the world court
It was an unexpected detour that led Abubacarr Tambadou from his home in the tiny West African country of The Gambia to experience an epiphany on the edge of a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. Listening to survivors’ stories he said the “stench of genocide” began drifting across the border into Bangladesh from Myanmar. “I realised how much more serious it was than the flashes we’d seen on television screens,” he told the BBC…MORE: BBC
