NY times: LONDON — Only a week ago, the Red Mosque seemed a nearly untouchable bastion of Islamist extremism in Pakistan, a notorious seminary in central Islamabad known for producing radicalized, and sometimes heavily armed, graduates. On Friday evening, though, the tables were turned when hundreds of angry protesters stood at […]
The Independent: The grief has given way to rage. Three days after Pakistan suffered its worst ever terrorist attack, with the massacre of 132 schoolchildren in Peshawar, the country has hit back. In the tribal areas of North Waziristan and Khyber along the Afghan border, Pakistani jets strafed militant targets […]
Telegraph: Two men have been arrested following a storm over extremists handing out leaflets in London’s Oxford Street urging Britons to join Isil. The men, both from Luton, were arrested […]
Rappler.com: PARIS, France – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused European governments on Monday, December 15, of siding with the Palestinians over their latest UN bid for statehood, saying their […]
HRW: Pakistan’s blasphemy law goes Bollywood Pakistan’s blasphemy law has claimed its first Bollywood victim. DECEMBER 15, 2014 Enlarge Members of the Pakistani Christian community chant slogans during demonstration to condemn the death of a Christian couple on November 6, 2014. © 2014 Reuters Enlarge Employees of Pakistan’s biggest television station, […]
Daily Times: Speaking to the Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI’s) three-day convention in Lahore, the ameer (chief) of the party, Sirajul Haq, told his followers that UK agents in Pakistan were trying to spread the propaganda that Jinnah had envisaged Pakistan to be a secular state. He went on to claim Jinnah had […]
Global Post: For the vast majority of American Christians, attending church is a racially segregated experience. Just 7 percent of all US congregations were racially mixed in 1998. By 2012that number had climbed to 13 percent, according to Michael Emerson, professor of sociology at Rice University and author of three […]
Source: The Telegraph Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are a menace to everyone in the country; even speaking out against them now constitutes blasphemy itself It’s hard to read about the blasphemy convictions handed […]
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 […]
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 […]
.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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Source: The Guardian Government of Andalusia says Diocese of Córdoba is ignoring site’s history as a place of worship for Muslims and Christians Inscriptions from the Qur’an share space with […]
thenation.com: This is the most dangerous time for Russian-US relations since the Cuban missile crisis, according to Stephen Cohen. When Cohen joined The Young Turks this week, he explained that we are living through a new Cold War, and that those who deny it are the people who “got us into it […]
Daily Mail: A Lord Mayor walked out of an Islamic charity lunch after discovering that he would have to be segregated from his female consort. Labour councillor John Thomas, 70, […]
Market watch: MOSCOW — Striking a defiant tone, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the West of provoking a crisis in Ukraine and using sanctions to try to constrain […]