“In a rare outbreak of bipartisan compromise and a partial victory for the White House, the Senate foreign relations committee voted unanimously to amend language in legislation that once threatened to give congressional hawks a chance to derail nuclear diplomacy and risk … military strikes”:
With Nigerian schoolgirls now free from the clutches of Boko Haram embracing Western education with an in-your-face attitude towards their former captors, President-elect Muhammadu Buhari cockily threatens the terrorist group …
- #BringBackOurGirls: One Year Later, Girls Who Escaped Speak Out (AP / abc News)
- Why Nigerians Who Fled from Boko Haram Aren’t Ready to Return Home (Christian Science Monitor)
… yet he admits “that he cannot promise to find the 219 [girls] who are still missing”:
- One Year Later, Nigeria’s President-elect Can’t Promise to Find Missing Schoolgirls (Christian Science Monitor)
Developments in the Yemeni conflict include a UN arms embargo, Egyptian-Saudi coordination, the death of a Saudi religious figure, and an Iranian peace proposal:
- Yemen Conflict: Houthi Rebels Condemn UN Arms Embargo (BBC)
- Egypt and Saudi Arabia Discuss Maneuvers as Yemen Battles Rage (Reuters)
- Yemen Al Qaeda Branch Says Top Cleric Killed in Drone Attack (Christian Science Monitor)
- Iran’s Four-point Peace Plan for Yemen: Will Saudis Buy In? (Christian Science Monitor)
“Sharia, she points out, is a world view, ‘the divine order of the universe’. What she is interrogating is fiqh, the Muslim legal tradition of man-made rules based on almost exclusively male interpretations of sacred texts”:
- Why Is Isis a Wake-up Call to Muslim Women? (Guardian)
Rather than “argue with those who have no desire to gain a deeper understanding of Islam, or … who lack understanding of historical context and … can’t differentiate between the literal and analogical ….[, it] would be far more powerful to embody the values for which Islam stands”:
“Counter-terrorism can only succeed if both civil society and the government work together to counter violent extremism” — joint statement by 15 civil society groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Kenyan Human Rights Commission:
“Afkham will only be the second female ambassador Iran has had…. [President] Rouhani said this week that he saw it as his government’s duty to create equal opportunities for women”:
“I have not written (in party mouthpiece Saamana) that the voting rights of Muslims should be taken away. I only said that Muslims will not be used for political opportunism if they are not allowed to vote” …
- ‘Anti-Muslim Comment’: Sena Leader Makes U-turn (Times of India)
… and one way to prevent them from voting is to prevent them from reproducing–and ditto for Christians:
Does the man who “tweeted a photo of the men praying and captioned it: ‘Muslims praying at half time at the match yesterday #DISGRACE'” even know what the definition of “grace” is?
