The events of of the last two decades have shown us, more than before, that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and the process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is since the 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different communities along ...

While secularism can be seen as a point of departure for Bangladeshi nationalism from the 1950s onward, the post-1971 reality is that it is now being imposed without taking into account the increasingly religious mindset of the overwhelming majority of Bangladeshis. Modernity’s jihad against religion seems to be in retreat. The incarceration of religion within the private ...

Supporters greet the arrival of a returning comrade at the Cairo railway station. In anticipation of Huda Sharawi's return from an international meeting with fellow feminists in Rome, those awaiting are wearing the niqab (face-cover). Unveiling her own niqab in front of these supporters on May 1923, Sharawi sought to overthrow a restrictive custom and empowering her right to act in this ...

Good old fashioned stories normally have heroes and anti-heroes who fight it out until one of them, usually the former, depending on the whims of the author or film director, emerges victorious. Similarly in the realm of fact as much as fiction, a Manichean narrative divides political actors. The Arab world before the effusive Arab Spring that brought down long-established gerontocracies ...

First of all: I am happy that finally "Men in Islam" is the theme of a conference. Every so often, I have been invited to speak on various aspects of "Women in Islam", a theme on which you nowadays find enough material to stock a library. Besides, quite some effort has been invested in girls' education, demands for women's rights, women's helplines and ...

This article underpins a pubic conversation hosted in conjuction with the Muslims Institute, British Muslims for Secualr Democracy and Semiticart, entitled Towards a secualr Islam State. The ‘conversation’ shall seek to re-examine the notion of what the term ‘secular’ means to Arabs and the connotations it carries, but more importantly how Muslim Scholars and the ...

Religion is back in the public space, and the thesis that modernisation means the privatisation of religion has been seriously questioned. Some religious and feminist dogmas need re-examination. What do ‘secular’or ‘religious’ or ‘feminist’ mean in today’s contexts? Islam and feminism are often perceived and portrayed as incompatible. There ...

From the periphery, Ethiopian Muslim protesters have recently turned a page in the history of the country. They have proven that demonstrations by religious groups can be peaceful, that secularism can be the aim of these groups instead of their nemesis and that a radical Islamist agenda doesn't have to be the dominant one. The early contact between Ethiopia and Islam is ...

At the age of ninety-five Professor Bernard Lewis has written his memoirs, in collaboration with his companion, Buntzie Ellis Churchill: Bernard Lewis, with Buntzie Ellis Churchill, Notes On A Century, Reflections of A Middle East Historian, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2012 It has been a fascinating life. Lewis was a brilliant young student, not just getting a first in History at ...

What if a breakthrough came; where researchers and inventors into alternative science get their act together; where anomalous physical phenomena, mind affected phenomena and seemingly impossible inventions that contradict the current laws of physics all started to make sense; but in a revolutionary way – what if a breakthrough came that opened a whole new paradigm where science and ...