It didn’t seem like too long ago that conservatives in the United States mocked the activism of liberal-minded Hollywood activists and the futility of their pursuits in far-off countries.
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Tag Archives: islamic
Three Hours in Doha
FIFA controversially awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. But the tiny Gulf state’s bid was just another step in its ambitious push to become a global hub.
Al-Qaeda Now
Which is scarier, the noise or the silence?
The Two-Faced Veil: Symbol of Patriarchy or Islamic Feminism?
For Muslims immigrants in America, the days following 9/11 were a harrowing encounter with fear-fueled American hate. IPod bearing, second-generation techies faced insults in Silicon Valley parking lots; schoolgirls wearing head scarves were attacked; and mosques across the country were vandalized or set ablaze.
The Unending Feud: Shi’ites vs. Sunnis
There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” That confession of faith, the shahada, is professed by all Muslims, be they the 700 million Sunnis who dominate the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia or the 90 million Shi’ites who rule Iran and form majorities in Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq. To the shahada, however, the Shi’ites add, “And Ali is the Friend of God.” Those additional words in praise of Ali, whom the Shi’ites passionately claim is Muhammad’s true successor, epitomize the complex and often bloody feud between Islam’s two branches.
On the Edge: A Nation with Nukes
It was George W. Bush on the phone
An Eye for an Eye: Iran’s Blinding Justice System
Iran’s judiciary has postponed the blinding of a man as punishment for throwing acid in the face of a young woman in 2004, after she rejected his offer of marriage. The delay came in the face of mounting outcry both inside Iran and in the West over the sentencing, which is permissible under qesas, a principle of Islamic law allowing victims analogous retribution for violent crimes.
Gaddafi: Obsessed By a Ruthless, Messianic Vision
In the movie reel of his imagination, he sees himself standing alone in the desert, silhouetted against the moon, swathed in traditional Bedouin robes, a farsighted prophet of Islam and the mighty creator of the Great Arab Nation, stretching from the warm Persian Gulf to the dark Atlantic Ocean–a nation that would eclipse the West in power and glory and purity.
Introducing Democracy, Egyptian Style
To listen to Kamal Habib extol the democratic ideal is to slip into a parallel universe where down is up and black is white. This is, after all, the co-founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who was jailed for years — some of them alongside his classmate from university Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda’s No
The Revolution Stops Here
Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Qatar-based Islamic scholar, recently preached that the “train of the Arab revolution” had arrived in Syria. Syria could well be ripe for upheaval