Month: April 2016

“Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said … his office is considering options to obtain and publicly disclose an estimate of the number of U.S. persons caught incidentally in Internet surveillance intended for foreign targets” … U.S. Weighs Disclosure of Number of Surveilled Americans — Spy Chief (Reuters) … while beyond the constitutionality of FISA…

“[D]emonstrators … marched from central Baghdad to an entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the government has its headquarters, chanting that politicians ‘are all thieves’.” One said that the government “did not bring … anything but poverty and killing”: Iraqi MPs Approve Five Candidates for New Cabinet (AFP/ The National) Does Turkey’s polarization reflect…

As in Western countries that prohibit the sale of alcohol (or other drugs) , the punishment for non-Muslims is jail time, but this Christian women elected to be treated equally with Muslim offenders in the “only province in the country that punishes … boozing … with lashes”: Jail or a Public Beating? In this Indonesian…

Gulf states are “upset by’ reports that Obama “cast them as ‘free-riders’ in U.S. security efforts” while he wants them “to offer more democratic reforms and improve human rights” and Congress threatens action over alleged Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks” … Obama, Saudi King Discuss Strained Alliance, Middle East Conflicts (Reuters) The Saudi government tries to…

“Turkey’s state-run news agency … said police had arrest warrants for of 140 people, including businessmen and former employees of the Gulen-linked Bank Asya, which was seized by the government last year”: Turkey Detains 101 People Linked to US-Based Muslim Cleric (AP / abc News) One passenger, whose family was granted asylum after his own…

“The new poll, based on face-to-face interviews with 3,500 respondents ages 18 to 24, suggests that young Arabs are both increasingly fearful of the terrorist group and less swayed by its propaganda, compared with previous years”: New Poll Finds Young Arabs Are Less Swayed by the Islamic State (Washington Post) “[W]hen you look at that…

Although “practised for decades now, the unilateral instant triple talaq is clearly an aberration – … Islamic scholars say the Koran clearly spells out how to issue a divorce – it has to be spread over three months which allows a couple time for reflection and reconciliation”: Triple Talaq: India’s Muslim Women Fight Against Instant…

Pretending “that Muslim women can be liberated from patriarchal structures through Western military intervention” is based in “an Orientalist perspective that sees Muslim women as passive victims without agency;” nor should we deny that ISIS is the product of U.S. interventionism: Congressional Panel on Women and Terrorism Puts Women in the War on Terror’s Crosshairs…

That the Prophet neither forcibly converted nor expelled his enemies “gives the lie to Qureshi’s statement that the Prophet fought them on account of religious differences.” Nor did he fight the neighboring Abyssinian Christian kingdom that “permitted [Muslims] freedom of religion”: Was Muhammad a Man of Peace? A Detailed Response to Nabeel Qureshi (Patheos) Muslims…