Law

Stephen Hawking, science and sharia

I remember reading the book (A Brief History of Time) when it was first published in 1988 and I found it fascinating and even enthralling. It inspired in me an awe towards the immenseness of the cosmos and the insignificance of human knowledge at the same time it awakened in […]

Calls for sharia law in Australia under fire

Deep divisions over the future of Islam in Australia have emerged after calls for the adoption of sharia law in submissions to a federal parliamentary inquiry into multiculturalism. Citing existing Government support for Islamic banking and laws governing halal meat – and backing from the Archbishop of Canterbury – Muslim […]

Former California First Lady Maria Shriver on Tuesday called “heartbreaking” husband Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission that he had fathered a child with a former household staff member more than a decade ago.

By Mark Z. Barabak and Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times Former California First Lady Maria Shriver on Tuesday called “heartbreaking” husband Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission that he had fathered a child with a former household staff member more than a decade ago. “This is a painful and heartbreaking time,” Shriver said […]

Belief in God frees us

My hope that Dutch MP Geert Wilders’ visit to Canada would come and go quietly was wishful thinking. His speeches, including one in Ottawa Tuesday, have been widely covered, and the articles I’ve seen have been painful to read. Wilders appears to insult the intelligence of 1.6 billion Muslim people the world […]

VIEW: Anti-women bias in fiqh — Part I

It is the unilateralist approach of the sole proprietors of fiqh to matters of faith in the socio-economic lives of Muslims that has given rise to certain malpractices. One such area that has a far-reaching and deeply destabilising impact on society is the way fiqh seems to treat females with […]

Syria’s Umayyad Mosque: A symbol of pluralism

By CHRISTIAN C. SAHNER   It’s Friday and the weekly congregational prayer has just ended at the Umayyad Mosque, Syria’s most famous monument. As the faithful exit, they walk past an unassuming bit of masonry on the mosque’s southern wall: a Greek inscription above a blocked doorway, with a most […]