Does a reform-driven pope have the power to change doctrine?
Global Post: How far can a pope go? Francis is a change agent rivaled by few other figures in power today. Does a reform-driven pope have the power to change doctrine? […]
Author Archives
Dr. Abdul Alim
Dr. Abdul Alim is a national of Pakistan and is a physician with specialization in Public Health from University of Texas at Houston USA. He is a member of the reformist, democratic and moderate Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam which inspires his deep commitment to Human Rights, Social Justice, Peace and Secularism. He is an author and Editor on Islam, for The Muslim Times (www.themuslimtimes.Info), a global blog highlighting the positive and true character of Islam as a basis for peace building.
Professionally he is a member of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and UN Development Policy Network. He has more than 20 years of work experience in development management related to governance in social sectors, more specifically in public policy, programme planning, and monitoring and evaluation. For the last 15 years he has worked with the United Nations in the developing world covering countries in South Asia, South East Asia, CEE/CIS, and the Middle East.
Celibacy could cause child abuse, landmark Catholic report admits
Russia Today: Obligatory celibacy could have contributed to child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, a group of Australian archbishops has admitted, becoming the first-ever Catholic institution to publicly acknowledge […]
Islamophobia is racism, pure and simple
Source: The Guardian By Yassin Musharbash Islamophobia is on the rise in Germany. That is troubling enough. But what’s even more concerning is that many of those whom I would define […]
Indonesian editor accused of blasphemy over IS cartoon AFP
Dawn: JAKARTA: The chief editor of a leading English-language newspaper in Muslim-majority Indonesia has been named a suspect in a blasphemy case after the publication of a cartoon about the Islamic State group, police said Friday. The Jakarta Post’s Meidyatama Suryodiningrat could be jailed for up to five years if […]
UNICEF: ‘Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality’
The Washington Post: by Nick Kirkpatrick — Esther Tokpah, an 11-year-old orphan in Monrovia, Liberia, who lost both parents to Ebola. A new report released on Monday by UNICEF declares 2014 a “devastating” year for children. “Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony […]
UN official calls for prosecution after CIA revelations
.itv.com: A United Nations human rights expert has called for the prosecution of US officials who ordered acts of torture against detainees. Ben Emmerson, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights […]
Reza Aslan on What the New Atheists Get Wrong About Islam
http://nymag.com/: In the recent culture-war flare-ups over Islam, the side arguing that the religion is inherently dangerous and violent has tended to be overrepresented in the media, pulling together an unlikely coalition of right-wingers and otherwise-liberal pundits like Bill Maher, as well as New Atheists such as Sam Harris and […]
1,000 Years of Scientific Texts From The Islamic World Are Now Online
Loonwatch: A massive undertaking by the Qatar Digital Library that preserves a millennium of scientific work. (h/t: S. I.) By Mark Strauss Between the 9th and 19th centuries, Arabic-speaking scholars translated Greek, […]
Stop believing the lies: America tortured more than ‘some folks’ – and covered it up
theguardian: by Trevor Timm — It wasn’t that bad, we’ve been told, over and over again, for more than a decade. “We only waterboarded three people” goes the line American officials have been force-feeding the world for years. “We tortured some folks,” Barack Obama admitted recently, still downplaying war crimes […]
Report fellow students on road to terrorism, Ottawa imam urges
Ottawa Citizen: by Chris Cobb — Ottawa Imam Imtiaz Ahmed, leader of Stop the CrISIS, an initiative to counter the radicalization of Canada’s Muslim youth, says new converts — like former University of Ottawa student John Maguire — appear particularly vulnerable. Canadian Muslims, especially students, shouldn’t hesitate to report anyone […]
Thought-provoking ideas in religious studies
theguardian — Pupils from St Marylebone school, London, attend a multi-faith assembly in church. It would be a grave disservice to students “to ditch religious studies in school” (Loose canon, 5 December) and to trivialise multifaith religious education as “mushy relativism” is unjust. Educators from Bosnia visiting our comprehensive school […]
Islam and Extremism: Two Different Pictures
Tikkun Daily Blog: Thomas Friedman wrote a recent article for the New York Times in which he extensively quoted a Muslim turned Christian Arab activist, Brother Rachid. According to Rachid, President Barack Obama should […]
Syrian Hebrew Bibles Could Spark Ownership Dispute
Huff Post: JERUSALEM (AP) — Two decades after Israeli spies helped Syrian Jews whisk ancient Hebrew bibles from Damascus to Jerusalem, Israel’s national library asked an Israeli court on Monday to grant it custodianship over the manuscripts — a move that could spark an ownership battle over some of the […]
The Denial of Religious Freedom Yields Worse Conditions for Women and Atheists
RNS: PRESS RELEASE: In a concise but wide-ranging interview, Brian Grim, president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, discusses the adverse impact for women, atheists and society in general when religious freedom is denied. watch: Rather than religious freedom being in contradiction with other basic human rights, Grim describes how they all advance or […]
Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England in wake of food bank report
Guardian: The Conservative party is seeking to avert one of its biggest rifts with the Church of England for decades as an all-party report on food banks warns that Britain […]
When will Aung San Suu Kyi break her calculated silence on Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis?
RNS: In an article originally published in early 2012 and originally titled “Word power,” Aung San Suu Kyi wrote: “Words allow us to express our feelings, to record our experiences, to concretise our ideas, to push outwards the frontiers of intellectual exploration. Words can move hearts, words can change perceptions, words can […]
Senator Jay Rockefeller singlehandedly kills Freedom of Information Act reform
http://boingboing.net/: The House unanimously passed a bill that would bring much-needed improvements to the Freedom of Information Act; the Senate had bi-partisan support for it, too — but outgoing Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) singlehandedly killed the bill in a closed-door committee meeting. He offered vague, bullshitty excuses for this, citing nonspecific issues […]
How ISIS Drives Muslims From Islam
NY Times: THE Islamic State has visibly attracted young Muslims from all over the world to its violent movement to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. But here’s what’s less visible — the online backlash against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by young Muslims declaring […]
Junaid Jamshed: chickens coming home to roost
Daily Times: Junaid Jamshed does not fit that mould by any standard. Except that there is not one kind of religious fundamentalism. He just got caught in the crosshairs of two warring groups fighting for the crown Junaid Jamshed has been left very confused. On the one hand, being part […]
Religious freedom in 21st century Pakistan
Pakistan can be allowed to become radicalised or it can be salvaged as a large Muslim majority, democratic nation state Starting with the Lahore Resolution, every major landmark constitutional document, including the Objectives Resolution, has promised religious freedom and equal rights for minorities in Pakistan. Despite this, the situation of […]