Unique sentencing from Christian judge in Lebanon, where insulting religion can be punishable by up to three years in prison, praised as message of coexistence Three Lebanese teenagers who were hauled before a court on charges of insulting Christianity have been handed the unusual sentence of studying the references to the Virgin Mary found in the Quran.  Christian judge Joceline Matta found …

From Parliamentarians of intellectual giants To those accused of corruption, crime, fraud and hooliganism By Latheef Farook During the second half of 1960s when I started my journalistic career with the now defunct Independent Newspapers, I was sent to cover parliamentary proceedings. Within weeks I realized that here was a place where one could learn a lot. Those were the …

The image was designed to shock: dozens of Muslims prostrated towards Mecca behind the razor wire of Goulburn’s Supermax jail. “Jailhouse jihad,” the headline blared above a story warning that Australia’s prisons were becoming a hotbed of extremism. It’s a theme that appears sporadically in the national media. One that, intentionally or otherwise, conflates in the reader’s mind prison-based conversions to Islam and radicalisation. …

The forthcoming local government elections once again exposes the political bankruptcy of Sri Lanka’s sinking Muslim community especially in the east. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the unfortunate outcome of national racist  politics , came with the slogan of Islam and Unity, seem to have come to the end of the road. The SLMC ruthlessly exploited religious slogans to hoodwink the …