Religion

Pakistanis Blame CIA for Fresh Polio Cases

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Pakistan’s efforts to contain polio in areas bordering Afghanistan may have received a setback following the conviction of a doctor who allegedly ran a fake vaccine programme to locate Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

TAJIKISTAN: Could Showdown With Popular Cleric Backfire?

By Correspondents
With a court order to close one of Tajikistan's most popular mosques, President Imomali Rahmon's administration is stepping up its campaign to neutralise both Islam and the last vestiges of any political opposition.
Sectarian rifts have seeped into most public schools in Lebanon. Credit: Mona Alami/IPS

Schools Plant Seeds of Sectarianism

By Mona Alami
Though most Lebanese take great pride in their national education system, deep sectarian rifts in public schools have made it impossible to ignore the political and religious fragmentation of society or its long-term impacts on youth. 

Calls for Jihad Split Salafist Movement

By Mona Alami
The Arab Spring brought a host of new actors to the political stage. In Jordan, it pushed the Salafists to the fore, where some of the group’s more radical elements are now calling for holy war in neighbouring Syria.

MLK Centre: Building Social Networks in Cuba for 25 Years

By Ivet González
There was little familiarity with community networks in Cuba until Apr. 25, 1987, when the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Centre (CMMLK) was founded. Today, this ecumenical Christian organisation links up local initiatives with others in the Americas.
Egyptians are voting for a president with undefined powers. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

A Sort of President Awaits Egypt

By Cam McGrath
Candidates competing in Egypt's first presidential election since Hosni Mubarak was ousted are vying for a prestigious position whose job description – oddly enough – has not yet been written. An unresolved dispute over who will write a new constitution for post-Mubarak Egypt has put the country in the unusual position of voting for a president with undefined authority.

India’s Economic Growth Leaves Human Development in the Dust

By Isolda Agazzi
Ahead of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India, a coalition of NGOs denounced the gap between the country’s growth rate and the rate of poverty, malnutrition and lack of health and sanitation.

Poverty Fuels Clashes in Lebanon

By Zak Brophy
Age-old battlegrounds in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli have descended into violence once again. While the events are highly disturbing they are not necessarily surprising for Lebanon’s residents, who have grown accustomed to violent clashes along the impoverished sectarian divides in the city.

Obama’s Gay Marriage Endorsement Makes Waves in the Caribbean

By Peter Richards
It is a widely recognised cliché that when the United States sneezes, the Caribbean catches cold.

Presidential Hopefuls Haunted by their Past

By Cam McGrath
One is a conservative Islamist attempting to reinvent himself as a pragmatic liberal, the other is a secular statesman trying to distance himself from the authoritarian regime he once served. Both aspire to be Egypt’s first civilian president.

War Widows Turn to Sex Work in Sri Lanka

By Feizal Samath
On May 18, some 800 women in Sri Lanka’s northern region will hold Hindu religious ceremonies for the welfare of thier husbands who disappeared or surrendered to the military as it moved in to mop up nearly three decades of armed Tamil separatism.

Islamists Stall Gender Equality Bill

By Kafil Yamin
The fate of a gender equality bill pending in Indonesia’s parliament and aligned with the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms discrimination against women (CEDAW) has become uncertain after falling afoul of powerful Islamist groups.

Calls Mount for Stronger U.S. Stance as Bahrain Resists Reform

By Jim Lobe
Citing growing violence and polarisation along sectarian lines, human rights groups and independent experts here are urging Washington to exert more pressure on the government of Bahrain to free political prisoners and launch a serious dialogue with its opposition on major democratic reforms.
A protest in Amman, now a weekly sight. Credit: Mona Alami/IPS.

Fragmented Protests Rise in Jordan

By Mona Alami
On a warm Friday afternoon, police cars blocked the roads around the Al Husseini mosque, where hundreds of men were kneeling for the noon prayers. At the end of the service, the crowds rose and marched in a compact protest behind a car bearing a banner for the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Report on Iran’s Nuclear Fatwa Distorts Its History

By Gareth Porter
The Barack Obama administration's new interest in the 2004 religious verdict, or "fatwa", by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning the possession of nuclear weapons, long dismissed by national security officials, has prompted the New York Times to review the significance of the fatwa for the first time in several years.

War on Terror Traumatises Pakistani Women

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Collateral damage caused by the ‘war on terror’, prosecuted by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan since 2001, may well extend to psychological trauma sustained by thousands of women in the bordering areas of northwestern Pakistan.
Al-Shater at his first press conference as presidential candidate. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

Muslim Brotherhood’s Presidential Aims Challenged

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has surprised both supporters and rivals by abruptly announcing its own nominee for upcoming presidential elections, despite earlier promises that it would not field a candidate from within its own ranks.

White House Expresses Growing Concern Over Bahrain

By Jim Lobe
The White House Wednesday said it was "deeply concerned" about growing polarisation between the ruling monarchy and the majority Shi'a community in Bahrain and the welfare of a jailed human rights activist who has been on a hunger strike since early February.
Rehearsing at Sachal Studios in Lahore. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS.

Pakistani Jazz Touches New Chords

By Zofeen Ebrahim
The silencing of music in the name of Islam led Pappu to give up the cello and set up a tea stall. But Pappu and other musicians survived the Islamist regime for former dictator Zia ul-Haq and the recent ways of the Taliban to return to the most surprising group of musicians to have emerged over years – on a dusty little street in the Pakistani city Lahore.
Tuareg rebels have seized Timbuktu and other northern cities in Mali. Credit: Emilio Labrador/CC BY 2.0

Islamist Rebel Faction Imposes Sharia in the North of Mali

By Soumaila T. Diarra
As armed groups have captured Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the three largest cities in northern Mali, the differences within the alliance have begun to emerge. There are reports of rape and looting in Gao, while in Timbuktu an Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, has announced the imposition of sharia law.

Uzbekistan Takes Hardline Approach on Containing Turkish Soft Power

By Correspondents and - -
Religion is a wedge that is driving Uzbekistan and Turkey apart.
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