News and Analysis (10/24/18)

“To select just a certain period that could be one or two centuries out of 3,000 years and to call the site a Jewish site is really a joke” — Nazmi Jubeh, a historian at Bir Zeit University who “would like to see the site but it is off limits to Palestinian archaeologists”:

• New Israeli Archaeological Site Tightens Noose Around Suffering Hebron Palestinians (The National)

“These measures will almost have zero impact because Hezbollah relies on cash supply from Iran and Syria”:

• Iran-backed Hezbollah Sanctioned by US Senate (VoA)

To outsiders it “may appear inconsequential, … dismissed by some Iranian women abroad as a “trick” … to give the appearance of loosening of social rules, while a crackdown and arrests continue. But inside Iran … entry to the stadium for a live game was the latest sign of slow but deliberate progress”:

• For Iran’s Women’s Movement, Progress Is Slow. But It’s Progress (Christian Science Monitor)

“On removal from SWIFT, the demand for alternative transaction systems such as the ones offered by blockchain companies will work best in filling that gap. Reportedly, Iran and Russia are already looking at blockchain-based solutions as an alternative”:

• US in Negotiations with SWIFT to Remove Iran from the Network, Golden Opportunity for Cryptos & Blockchain? (Coin Gape)

Against Dept. of Education charges that the ban on beards is unconstitutional, the school justifies it on the grounds that it is a Christian school; but if they would prohibit Jesus from attending because of his beard, its claim to be a Christian school seems like false advertising:

• Christian School in Row over Muslim Pupil’s Beard (702)
• Muslim Pupil and Joburg Christian School in a Row over Beard (IOL)

“The Committee acknowledged that States could require that individuals show their faces in specific circumstances for identification purposes, but considered that a general ban on the niqab was too sweeping for this purpose” …

• UN Panel Declares France’s ‘Burqa Ban’ Violates Muslim Women’s Rights (Huffington Post)

… while in a mirror image of state coercion, Iran tries to force Farhad Meysami’s hunger strike “in protest at his unlawful detention” for opposing state-enforced hijab (he was charged with “insulting Islamic sanctities”):

• Iran: Critically Ill Prisoner of Conscience Coerced to End Hunger Strike (Amnesty International)

“Islam in the Age of Liberalism …  presented the Age of Liberalism as ‘two parallel but connected theories: human liberty and the freedom of man, and the Islamic ideals that run alongside it”:

• Diversity of Islam Highlighted at Dinner (Sentinel-Tribune)

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