This week the world marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. During the six-year war — from 1939 to 1945 —  some 70 million people died. Of these only 17 million were combatants. As the war intensified, the belligerents did not care a damn about the rules of warfare. They resorted to all sorts of barbaric …

Muslim leaders yesterday appealed for unity among various sects after last week’s the Sunday Times revealed mounting tension in Kattankudy between the newly emerging Thawheed group and moderate followers of Islam. “We don’t want Muslim brothers to propagate Islam with the gun. There is a conflict of beliefs amongst the traditional Muslims and the Thawheed Muslims. What we want is …

West Bank – Sitting in my Tokyo apartment two years ago and planning a worldwide trip, I only considered travelling through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as a means to get from Turkey to Egypt. The thought of travelling through the Middle East both terrified and intrigued me. The majority of the news I heard from Tel Aviv, Damascus or Beirut …

The Lockerbie case is not yet over. Last week’s release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan secret agent convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, has once again brought the case into the limelight, giving rise to much debate. Yet, the rightwing Western media have not seen the wood for the trees. Probably at the whipping command of the anti-Arab …

Here is a fitting rejoinder to those extremist scholars who declare music to be unislamic – From an Islamic standpoint Music is Halal By Default…You Need Evidence For Its Prohibition There is a guiding principle amongst the surviving schools of thought that all matters not related to worship (those in the cultural realm for example) are deemed to be permissible …