Islam

by Hamza Mekouar | – Moulay Driss Zerhoun (Morocco) (AFP) – It’s dubbed the “pilgrimage of the poor” — every summer, tens of thousands of people flood this small central Moroccan town to honour a Sufi saint buried here 12 centuries ago. Moulay Driss Zerhoun, nestled between two hills covered in olive groves, is where […]

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Early Arabic Inscriptions and the Life of the Prophet: A new Source for History

Juan Cole

Among the anecdotes told in the early biographies of the Prophet Muhammad is one about him being harassed by his immediate neighbors in Mecca, in roughly the period 614-622. One way they bothered him was to throw sheep offal through the window of his home in Mecca where he lived with his first wife, Khadija. […]

Islam

Love in the Qur’an: 19:96

Juan Cole

Despite the negative messaging nowadays about the Qur’an (the scripture of the Muslims) among the haters, it is a book replete with love, mercy, warmth and peace (to the extent that Muslims are bewildered by the odd opinions of it among outsiders–most of whom have never read it). My new book, out October 9, explores […]

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Surprise! On how Muhammad never preached “Jihad”

Juan Cole

The word “jihad” has become pervasive in English. The Western Right wing is trying to use the term to replace the Communist Manifesto as the ultimate in the threatening Other. It figures prominently in FBI charges against militants. It is often glossed as “holy war.” People, especially those who dislike Islam, think that it means […]

Buddhism

Army of Buddhist Burma made ‘Systematic’ Crackdown Plan for Muslim Rohingyas

AFP

Bangkok (AFP) – Myanmar’s military engaged in “extensive and systematic” preparations for a bloody crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, a rights group said Thursday, in a damning new report that it says justifies a genocide investigation. A bloody military campaign that started last August forced some 700,000 of the effectively stateless minority over the border into […]

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New Light on the Arabian Religious Background of Islam?

Juan Cole

There is a key problem with our sources on early Islam. Aside from the Qur’an itself, all the sources we have were written down after the Abbasid Revolution of 750 against the Umayyads. The first author to compile a complete biography of Muhammad (d. 632), the chronicler Muhammad ibn Ishaq of Medina, was born around […]

Antisemitism

On how there is no Tradition of anti-Semitism in Islam

Peter Wien

College Park, Md. (Qantara.de) – Some are suggesting that Muslims are bringing anti-Semitism to Europe. However, it was in fact Europeans who took anti-Semitism to the Arab world in the first place. Diplomats in particular played an contemptible role. Holy books are what people make of them: after all, even the word of God needs […]

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Muslim Clerics condemn Suicide Bombing, Targeting Civilians as Violations of Islamic Law

Juan Cole

The Associated Press reports that Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo hosted a conference of 70 prominent Muslim clergymen from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia at the presidential palace in Bogor just south of Jakarta to combat extremism. The clergymen issued a joint fatwa or reasoned jurisprudential ruling declaring that suicide bombing is contrary to Islamic law. […]

Music

Pakistan’s Sufi music fights to be heard after singer’s Killing

AFP

By David STOUT | – – Karachi (AFP) – Nearly two years after Pakistan’s foremost qawwali singer Amjad Sabri was gunned down in Karachi, the devotional music of Islam’s Sufi mystical sect is struggling to survive, as fears of sectarianism and modern pressures slowly drown out its powerfully hypnotic strains. Thousands poured into the streets […]