Israel: America’s Frankenstein monster

Salon.com: With Israeli tanks rolling into the Gaza Strip and Hamas fighters firing dozens of rockets into Israel every day, the two sides in the endless Middle East standoff appear to be replaying scenes from a recurring nightmare, with real-world tragic effects. I don’t mean to suggest that the conflict […]

The Vatican and Islam Messages of light and dark

The Economist — OVER the past 24 hours, senior representatives of the Catholic church have delivered some mixed messages about Islam. The leaders of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue issued a statement urging the two faiths to work together to ease human suffering, especially in war zones. “We thank the Almighty for […]

Heaven’s Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance by Harris Irfan, review: ‘noble intentions’ Is sharia-compliant banking just a way of twisting the rules?

By Mona Siddiqui8:00AM BST 19 Jul 2014 Even those who assume to know something about sharia – Islamic law – are reticent to make claims about Islamic finance, so complex is this area of law. So when the phrase “sharia-compliant” first emerged in Western financial sectors in the early Nineties, […]