Islam

Kishwar Rizvi | (The Conversation) | – – There has been much misinformation about Islam. Reports in Western media tend to perpetuate stereotypes that Islam is a violent religion and Muslim women are oppressed. Popular films like “American Sniper” reduce places like Iraq to dusty war zones, devoid of any culture or history. Fears and […]

Islam

Muslim Shockwaves as New Congress’ Bill seeks all Jerusalem for Israeli Colonization

contributors

TeleSur | – – Three U.S. senators introduced a bill calling for U.S. embassy to be relocated to Jerusalem and recognizing city as Israeli capital. As it convened for the first Tuesday of the New Year, the new U.S. Congress made one of its primary orders of business the introduction of a bill to move […]

Assyrians

Wealthy Baghdad Muslim raised 85′ tall Christmas Tree in Solidarity

contributors

NewsBeat Social | (Video News report) | – – “A Muslim businessman in Iraq put up an 85-foot-tall Christmas tree in Baghdad to show solidarity with Iraqi Christians and help Iraqis “forget their anguish”” NewsBeat Social: ” LOOK: Christmas Tree in Baghdad ‘Represents Love and Peace’”

Islam

Can Faith and Modernity coexist under Muslimism?

contributors

By Neslihan Cevik | (Socialtrendsinstitute.org) | – – There is a new brand of Muslim religious orthodoxy on the rise in places like Turkey, which seeks to engage modernity through the sincere religious belief of individuals. Neslihan Cevik uses the term “Muslimism” to set it apart from other trends. Neslihan Cevik's new book, Muslimism in […]

Featured

Why Trump & his Cabinet’s Jihad against “Political Islam” will Fail

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Several members of Donald Trump’s new team, including National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and proposed Secretary of Defense Mike Mattis have expressed themselves troubled about “political Islam” (or in Flynn’s case, just “Islam”). Mattis seems to have confused Daesh’s (ISIS, ISIL) idea of a neo-Caliphate (bringing […]

Iraq

Does Turkey’s Erdogan Dream of Neighboring Mosul?

contributors

By Lucy DerTavitian | (Informed Comment) | – – The battle over Mosul appears to have ignited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s expansionist Ottoman era fantasies. He gained a few more adversaries recently when he claimed that Mosul, along with Aleppo, Western Thrace in Greece, and Kosovo, are part of Turkey. Erdogan’s comments come at […]

History

What Everyone Should Know about the Prophet Muhammad

contributors

Steve Scholl | (Spirituality and Health Magazine) | – – Muhammad has become a strangely unifying figure in America—able to get conservative Glenn Beck and liberal Bill Maher to agree that Islam is a backward, medieval religion and a threat to all civilization. Both are making a common, fundamentalist mistake. I was recently driving on […]

Arab World

Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East

contributors

By Christopher M. Davidson | (Informed Comment) | – – Swept along on a tidal wave of euphoria, by spring 2011 many had cautiously begun to believe that the wave of Arab uprisings that had already managed to topple the regimes of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak would herald the dawn of […]

Iraq

Sectarian Tensions flare in Baghdad as some Sunni Arab families forced from Neighborhoods

contributors

By Ibrahim Saleh | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) | – – Several Sunni Muslim families were forced out of their mainly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood in Baghdad recently. Locals fear the creeping return of sectarian tensions, as street by street changes. Earlier this month, the head of the Baghdad provincial council’s security committee, Mohammed al-Rubaie, announced that […]