At the end of July, Muslims will celebrate Eid al-Adha, the second of the two great Islamic festivals. It honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God’s command. God had mercy on him and spared Abraham from losing his son. Abraham sacrificed a sheep...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Peter Riddell, vice-principal at the Melbourne School of Theology in Australia. Islamophobia can be seen in a variety of ways. As a form of intolerance and discrimination, it risks affecting relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and...
When does a civilization in rapid decline stop being a civilization? Answer: when it requires a clash to understand itself. Egged on by the media and abetted by prominent politicians and intellectuals in Europe and the US, the world stumbles toward an increasingly confused and confusing “clash...
Scholars hoping to get an insider and yet critical appraisal of Islamic activism in Europe should take this book as their starting point. No religious minority in the world today has received so much global attention as the Muslims in Europe. From the burkini and burqa ban in France to the...
While the Islamic State makes war on the world’s vast majority of “moderate Muslims,” hard-liners in the West pretend they don’t exist. In the 13th century, the Italian town of Lucera was a Muslim island in a sea of Christendom. Here Frederick II, the head of the Holy Roman Empire,...
Opening channels of communication between Muslims and non-Muslims will bring positive results. If an initiative for recognizing the identities of atheists takes place in a region where religion has a major role in daily life, that obviously attracts a great deal of attention. The demand by...
Why is Myanmar silent over the plight of Rohingyas? A United Nations (UN) statement in January demanding an impartial probe into the killings of Muslims by Buddhists in Myanmar, has once again brought the issue of Rohingyas — widely accepted as the most persecuted minority group — to...
What lies at the heart of the Sunni-Shiite divide? Author's Note Last Thursday marked the holy day of Ashoura (“the tenth,” in Arabic). For the past 1,333 years, devout Shiite Muslims (as well as Alawites) all over the world join in deep grief on the tenth day of the Islamic month...
Terrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents, argues Juan Cole. Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent...
