By NAWAR FAKHRY EZZI What if there were a society where all people are in black and white with everyone murmuring the same prayers and leading the same way of life? For some people, this would be a dream come true. They believe that there is only one “true” path […]
By Taylor Luck AMMAN – Global and regional politics are not yet ripe for a Palestinian state, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as leadership in Ramallah eyes a less than certain future. The Palestinian premier, a champion of institution-building as a path to statehood, said the current political […]
The basic premise on which we won ourselves Pakistan was that a permanent majority cannot and should not dominate a permanent minority on account of numeric strength. Yet contrary to that founding logic, Pakistan is today legally a totalitarian fundamentalist theocracy A fresh round of hate has been unleashed against […]
Governor Heryawan banned Ahmadiyyah, now wife calls the Trafficking Victims ‘Hedonists’ A leading migrant workers’ activist has lashed out at the prominent wife of the West Java provincial governor, warning […]
The more known: Source: Wikipedia. Muharram (Arabic: المحرّم) is the first month of the Islamic calendar. It is one of the four sacred months of the year in which fighting is prohibited.[1] Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, Muharram moves from year to year when compared with the […]
By Laila Azzeh AMMAN – Often invisible to the eyes of the public or the law, many domestic helpers still face hardship when working in Jordanian households, having their wages […]
Article Source: The Associated Press Photo Source: Change.org A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday. The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingdom’s […]
Sufism – once just another variant of Islam, now bankrolled by Britain and the US as a ‘moderate’ form of the religion that could help counter extremism in Pakistan. But what is Sufism? Where did it come from? And what role does it play today? In the first of a […]
Thirty years ago this month, religious extremists pulled off an audacious attack on Islam’s holiest site in Mecca. Sec Kanwar speaks to one of the few writers to study this under-reported event, and looks at how what followed led to the global spread of Wahhabism, whose impact has been felt […]
By BEATA M. ANDONIA, Jerusalem Post: Bethlehem is singularly important with its historical place in history; people around the world hold a special place for this small city. Each year, […]
The Jakarta city administration has moved with exceptional speed to cut down an old mahogany tree said to harbor two distinct forms of Indonesian ghosts. The extraordinary turn of events […]
(AP) MANILA, Philippines — Away from fans’ prying eyes, David Beckham took time out from soccer to share his experiences and listen to Filipino children struggling to rebuild their broken lives. “It’s so important to have a dream,” Beckham told the former street children Friday at a UNICEF-supported shelter in […]
The situation in Syria is just a warm-up before a real confrontation, which will draw Russia and China into action, believes Lawrence Freeman from the Executive Intelligence Review magazine. Russia and China are rightly worried about what is behind the policy of the US and its allies in Syria and […]
By REUTERS BAGHDAD: The US military passed a milestone in its pending withdrawal from Iraq on Friday, vacating its vast main base near Baghdad airport that once housed the American […]
By GALAL FAKKAR | ARAB NEWS JEDDAH: Women account for a third of the 47,000 Saudi students on the King Abdullah foreign scholarship program in the United States, according to […]
KARACHI: The rupee’s downward rally continued in the interbank as it fell for five straight days against the dollar to close at Rs 89.40 on Friday. The greenback’s demand surged due to high import payment The rupee was traded at Rs 89.02 versus the dollar as imports’ payment of more […]
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev officially commissioned the first stage of the underground metro system in Almaty, the country’s largest city of 1.5 million people, on December 1. “Today is an exciting historical day for our country, when Kazakhstan’s first metro facility has been put into operation.,” Nazarbayev said […]
ISLAMABAD: In a development that pushes US-Pakistan relations further into the realm of uncertainty, the army has authorised its local commanders deployed near the Afghan border to retaliate to any […]
Women are forced to board public buses from the back and stay there. Billboards with images of women are defaced. Public streets are cordoned off during religious holidays so that women cannot enter. Saudi Arabia in the misogynistic grip of sharia law? Sadly, astonishingly, infuriatingly, it is Israel under the […]
Source: Dawn Afghanistan has pardoned a woman who was raped by a family member but then jailed for adultery, a statement from the presidential palace has said, in a case that highlights deep concerns about women’s rights in the country. It remained unclear whether the 21-year-old-woman, known as Gulnaz, would […]