Source: BBC Turkey’s PM Ahmet Davutoglu has said the country’s new constitution will feature the principle of secularism. He said Turkey’s secular and democratic character was “not up for debate”. […]
Source: New York Times WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has issued new rules that give prosecutors in Washington greater oversight and control over national security cases after the collapse of […]
Source. Balkan Insight Ervis Alinj and Bledar Hamza were childhood friends as they grew up together in the village of Leshnica in southeast Albania. Their paths later strayed, as Alinj migrated to Greece and Hamza moved with his family to Italy – both in search of better lives. Their paths […]
Source: The New York Times By Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn APRIL 26, 2016 Donald J. Trump is essentially two key states from the nomination. By sweeping five states on Tuesday, he pulled […]
Source. Balkan Insight Cracks between the Patriotic Coalition and the Bridge of Independent Lists, MOST, which make up Croatia’s ruling coalition, are deepening and jeopardizing the government’s very survival. More.
Source: BBC By Inka Piegsa-Quischotte 27 April 2016 How does a tiny Spanish village of just 62 souls come to be excommunicated in its entirety and cursed with a spell […]
Majid Nawaz, The Daily Beast LONDON — There really is no other way to put this. Free thinkers in Bangladesh are being serially hacked to death in their homes. An infamous hit list appeared in 2013 naming 84 “atheist bloggers.” By the end of 2015 there had been seven such murdersacross […]
Source: National Geographic By Gabe Bullard As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks. More people than ever before are identifying as atheist, agnostic, […]
Students at leading universities in the United Kingdom are launching bids to break ties with the National Union of Students (NUS) following the election of Malia Bouattia to the presidency. Bouattia previously opposed a student motion condemning the Islamic State on the grounds that to do so would be “Islamophobic” and would […]
Source: Time Here’s where Zika has spread around the world The Zika virus is continuing to spread around the globe, as health responders scramble to contain outbreaks and understand the effects of the virus, including serious brain defects like microcephaly. The World Health Organization recently warned that there is potential […]
Economist Blogs: 1616 deserves attention as the year in which William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died—it also saw the first sustained and documented contact between the Islamic world and Britain. The life of Britain’s most celebrated writer coincided with significant diplomatic relations between Protestant England and Muslim dynasties in […]
Lindsay Lohan, the American actress, is said to be “exploring” Islam. Speculation was first stirred by a photograph of the celebrity carrying a copy of the Koran while completing a stint of community service. This week, in an interview with the Sun, Lohan told the British tabloid that she was indeed reading Islam’s […]
Haaretz.com: Germany’s leading right-populist party has included the banning of some Jewish and Muslim rituals and symbols in its convention platform. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, or AFD, in the program to be presented at its party convention April 30-May 1 in Stuttgart, called for an end to the […]
Source: Reuters BY STEPHANIE NEBEHAY United Nations torture experts called on Saudi Arabia on Friday to stop corporal punishment, including flogging and amputations, practices that the Gulf kingdom considers an integral part of its interpretation of Islamic law. The committee that monitors the U.N. Convention against Torture, in its first […]
Source: Pacific Standard By Laura Ortberg Turner The world did not come to an end on September 6, 1994. Nor on May 21, 2011, or October 21 of that same […]
Source: Associated Press By NIRMALA GEORGE NEW DELHI (AP) — The bank executive, the book publisher and the social worker had one thing in common: Their hectic lives in the […]
Source: Associated Press By KARL RITTER STOCKHOLM (AP) — One refused to shake hands with a female journalist. Another compared Israel to Nazi Germany. A third was seen doing hand […]
Source: The Guardian By Saad Hammadi in Dhaka Asha Mone has been living in constant fear for her life. It is eight months since her husband, the Bangladeshi secular blogger […]
Source: BBC Bangladesh police say a top gay rights activist and editor at the country’s only LGBT magazine is one of two people who have been hacked to death. The […]
Source: Reuters BY AYLA JEAN YACKLEY AND ERCAN GURSES A call by Turkey’s parliament speaker for a new constitution to drop references to secularism provoked opposition condemnation and a brief […]