Three women dressed in burqas killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy in 2004 in a northeastern Pakistani town, police said on Thursday, the second brutal killing over alleged insults to Islam in a week. Blasphemy is a highly charged topic in Pakistan where there have been at least 66 murders over unproven […]
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A comic show and a recent pop concert have drawn rebuke from powerful religious figures and social media users in Saudi Arabia this week, highlighting the sensitivity of cultural reforms underway in the conservative kingdom. Thousands of Saudis – including women – decked out in costumes and face paint attended the country’s first-ever Comic Con […]
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Turkey has handed over to the U.S. Justice Department further documents to back its request for the extradition of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara accuses of orchestrating a failed July 15 coup attempt, Turkey’s justice minister said on Thursday. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that in a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch […]
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Politicians across Europe are calling for a ban on the Islamic veil but Bosnian Muslim Indira Sinanovic is defying the trend as well as widespread prejudice in her own country, becoming the first fully-veiled woman here to run for public office. Sinanovic, 37, wears the niqab – a garment that covers the hair and all […]
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Bulgaria’s parliament on Friday banned the wearing of face veils in public in a move which supporters said would boost security in the wake of Islamist militant attacks in Europe. The “burqa ban” law, pushed by the nationalist Patriotic Front coalition, echoes similar measures in western European countries such as France, Netherlands and Belgium which […]
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Saudi Arabia’s top religious authority said Iran’s leaders were not Muslims, drawing a rebuke from Tehran in an unusually harsh exchange between the regional rivals over the running of the annual haj pilgrimage. The war of words on the eve of the mass pilgrimage will deepen a long-running rift between the Sunni kingdom and the […]
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The world’s largest cemetery, in Iraq’s Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, is expanding at double its usual rate as the nation’s death rate increased with the war on Islamic State. The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for “Peace Valley,” has a special place in the hearts of Shi’ite Muslims as it surrounds the Mausoleum of their […]
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A former Islamist rebel admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali’s 2012 conflict and apologised at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court on Monday – its first case to focus on cultural destruction as a war crime. Mahdi asked for forgiveness and said he had been swept up in an “evil wave” […]
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A grave digger at work, finishing the final resting place for one of thousands of Bosniak men and boys slaughtered by nationalist Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. It’s known as the Srebrenica massacre. One hundred and twenty seven new graves are being added to the more than 6,300 already in this cemetery. The massacre was […]
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Pope Francis said on Sunday that it was wrong to identify Islam with violence and that social injustice and idolatry of money were among the prime causes of terrorism. “I think it is not right to identity Islam with violence,” he told reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after a five-day trip […]
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