religion

JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Thousands of ultra-Orthodox youths violently disrupted a Women of the Wall prayer service, on Friday, forcing the multi-denominational feminist group to move to another location after two of its members sustained injuries near the Western Wall. According to the spokesperson of Women of the Wall, the group was holding an anniversary prayer […]

Christianity

Is the Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse Crisis rooted in Sexism?

The Conversation

By Susan M. Shaw | – Recent media reports have revealed decades of abuse by Southern Baptist pastors. Denominational leaders are offering apologies and calling the sexual abuse “evil,” “unjust” and a “barbarity of unrestrained sinful patterns.” Many Southern Baptist leaders are considering action. As a scholar who has written a book on Southern Baptist […]

Qur'an

New Historicism: A Manifesto for Writing the History of the Qur’an

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In borrowing the term “the New Historicism” from literary studies, I do not mean to take over all its theses. Rather, I am making an analogy. Just as Stephen Greenblatt came to require a historical context for studies of Shakespeare, rebelling against the contextless New Criticism at Yale in the […]

Qur'an

New Archeological Evidence for the Kaaba, Sanctuary of Peace, in Early Islam

Juan Cole

During the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, believers circumambulate the square ‘House of God’ called the Kaaba. It is said to have predated Islam, and to have been cleansed of idols by the Prophet Muhammad in January of 630, when the town of Mecca swung to his leadership by acclamation. There is some new archeological evidence […]

Antisemitism

French Neo-Nazis Desecrate Jewish Cemetery with Swastikas in Alsace

AFP

Strasbourg (AFP) – Around 80 graves have been daubed with swastikas at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, local officials said, hours ahead of nationwide marches on Tuesday against a rise in anti-Semitic attacks. The damage was discovered on Tuesday morning at a cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany […]

Holocaust

Outreach of Israel’s Netanyahu to Polish Right Roiled by Holocaust Assertion

AFP

Warsaw (AFP) – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has cancelled a visit to Israel for a high-level summit, a government spokesperson told AFP on Sunday, after uproar in Poland over reported comments by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu about the Poles and the Holocaust. Netanyahu — who was initially quoted in Haaretz newspaper as saying that […]

Feminism

‘Muslim women are stuck between Islamophobes and Islamic fundamentalists’

Open Democracy

By Nandini Archer | – (OpenDemocracy.net) – From France to Malaysia, Muslim women’s rights activists are challenging those who ask them to ‘choose between being a Muslim and a feminist’. “Muslim women are stuck between Islamophobes on the one hand and Islamic fundamentalists on the other”, Suri Kempe, an outspoken rights activist from Malaysia, told […]

Islam

Pope Francis, Muslim Rector of al-Azhar, Call for Religious Freedom & Full Citizenship

AFP

by Catherine Marciano with Rene Slama in Dubai | – Abu Dhabi (AF) – Pope Francis and a top Muslim cleric Monday issued a joint call for freedom of belief during the first visit by the head of the Catholic church to the birthplace of Islam — the Arabian Peninsula. Francis, who has made outreach […]

Greece

Greece’s Muslim Minority Complain of “Marginalization”

AFP

Komotini (AFP) – Outwardly, Komotini looks like other Greek cities, but there is a major difference: it has nine mosques whereas there are none in Athens. The northeastern city has existed from the second century and was captured by Ottoman-era Turkey in the 14th. It was an important hub connecting the capital city of Constantinople, […]