The Hindu caretaker and his mosque: symbol of harmony amid India’s religious discord

Bechan Baba has dedicated his life to Varanasi’s Anarwali mosque, where Hindus and Muslims come to pray – despite the historical disputes raging outside Jyoti Thakur and Hanan Zaffar in Varanasi In the heart of Varanasi, where the sacred Ganges meanders by and incense smoke mingles with the faint echoes of prayers from a myriad… Read More The Hindu caretaker and his mosque: symbol of harmony amid India’s religious discord

Secular Opposition Crushes Islamist AKP in Turkey’s Local Elections

ARZU GEYBULLAYEVA ( Globalvoices.org ) – Turkey’s local elections which took place on March 31, will go down in history as one of its most surprising. Turkey’s demoralized opposition, namely the [secular] Republican People’s Party (CHP), dominated in what many pundits described as the ruling [center-right] Justice and Development Party’s worst defeat of its 22-year existence. For the first time since 1977, the CHP took… Read More Secular Opposition Crushes Islamist AKP in Turkey’s Local Elections

Femicides: 2000 Turkish women killed by men since Erdogan left Womens Rights Convention

At least 996 women in Turkey have been killed by men since the country’s 2021 withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty aimed at combating domestic violence, while 748 women have died under suspicious circumstances, Turkish Minute reported, citing a report by the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (KCDP). March 20 marks the third… Read More Femicides: 2000 Turkish women killed by men since Erdogan left Womens Rights Convention

Pakistani Dalits struggle for dignity in their land of birth

Members of Pakistan’s Scheduled Caste communities are making inroads in the country’s political landscape and being honoured at the highest levels. But without affirmative action, systemic change and implementation of laws and court orders that uphold rights, their struggle for equality continues. By Shaeran Rufus SOURCE: Sapan News www.sapannews.com Kishore Kohli*, 39, an agricultural labourer in Pakistan… Read More Pakistani Dalits struggle for dignity in their land of birth

Who Was Averroes?

Averroes (Ibn Rushd; 1126–1198) was one of the greatest polymaths of the ancient Islamic world, whose practice expanded into philosophy, theology, astronomy, physics, linguistics and more Averroism’, ‘radical Aristotelianism’ and ‘heterodox Aristotelianism’ are nineteenth- and twentieth-century labels for a late thirteenth-century movement among Parisian philosophers whose views were not easily reconcilable with Christian doctrine. The… Read More Who Was Averroes?

Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility: Lord Acton

Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton in a series of letters (1887) concerning the moral problem of writing history about the Inquisition. Acton believes that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since, in his famous phrase, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”: I… Read More Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility: Lord Acton

UN mission: institutional discrimination against women and girls enabled crimes against humanity in Iran

PRESS RELEASE: Iran – Institutional discrimination against women and girls enabled human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the context of recent protests, UN Fact-Finding Mission says A fact finding team led by the indomitable Sara Hossain have released this harrowing report yesterday on the violent repression by the Govt. of Iran on protestors, especially women. Please… Read More UN mission: institutional discrimination against women and girls enabled crimes against humanity in Iran

Sabry Hafez: the Novel, Politics and Islam – Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed

First posted June 07, 2016 The astonishing story of the uproar in Egypt over the publication of a Syrian novel set in Algeria—a work of literature as trigger for political crisis and polemical turmoil, two decades after it was written, in a landscape completely transformed. Haydar Haydar’s fiction as tuning-fork of stark dissonances of time… Read More Sabry Hafez: the Novel, Politics and Islam – Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed