Islamophobia

Amid a deepening crackdown on Palestine solidarity in the country, a senior member of the British parliament is leading a campaign to have a popular activist and Muslim scholar arrested. Alicia Kearns, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs has called...

Introduction “Why are Muslim women becoming feminists?” is the (not so) new “why are Muslim youth becoming radicalized?” sentiment… not amongst non-Muslims fearing the paths of angry young Muslims questioning Western socio-political hegemony, but amongst Muslims who are convinced that Muslim...

In September 2025, Donald Trump designated “antifa” a domestic terror organization. Last month, his administration went one step further by declaring that the “extreme left” had developed the antifa network into a global threat. Marco Rubio announced at a press...

Introduction “Why are Muslim women becoming feminists?” is the (not so) new “why are Muslim youth becoming radicalized?” sentiment… not amongst non-Muslims fearing the paths of angry young Muslims questioning Western socio-political hegemony, but amongst Muslims who are convinced that Muslim...

Robert Kagan surprised some people. One of America’s most influential hawks condemned the Trump administration’s botched war in Iran, suggesting in The Atlantic in March that U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a catalyst of, rather than a...

Anti-FGM activists protests outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on 18 March 2024, as lawmakers discuss a bill seeking to lift the ban on FGM. Credit: by Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP By Inés M. Pousadela MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 3 2026 (IPS) Last August,...

The following story is co-published with Tim Shorrock’s Substack newsletter, Empire Blues . When the flamboyant neoconservative R. James Woolsey passed away last week at the age of 84, The Washington Post and its fellow travelers in corporate media mourned him...

My former Georgetown professor, John Esposito, passed away on July 15, 2026, just as the military campaign between the U.S. and Iran reignited in what is becoming America’s “Third Gulf War.” It was America’s first Gulf War in 1991 that led...

There are scholars who interpret the world, scholars who flatter it, and scholars who quietly make it less cruel. John L. Esposito belonged emphatically to the third category. His passing deprives us not merely of a distinguished academic, but of...

By: Kalimullah Hassan As widely expected, Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional la st weekend swept to a resounding victory in elections in the populous southern state of Johor across the strait from Singapore, taking 48 of 56 seats and leaving its rival, Anwar...

“Why are Muslim women becoming feminists?” is the (not so) new “why are Muslim youth becoming radicalized?” sentiment… not amongst non-Muslims fearing the paths of angry young Muslims questioning Western socio-political hegemony, but amongst Muslims who are convinced that Muslim...

The West has killed its own soul and is not even aware of it Cross-posted from Aurelien’s substack “Trying to understand the world” Last week, we looked at some of the more practical and structural reasons for the increasing loss of western...

Ali Abunimah Returns to Zurich to Give the Talk That Got Him Arrested Esad Širbegović is a writer and analyst based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a member of the International Expert Team at the Institute for Research of Genocide...

History is terrifyingly contingent, and what seems obvious now was not always obvious then: nor, indeed, was it inevitable Cross-posted from Aurelien’s substack “Trying to understand the world” Joseph Ducreux : Self-portrait, called the Surprise Photo is in...

Sun’s out, and while some people are ready for (halal) pool parties, some of us just want to pick up a good book or ten. And with Muharram having just begun, it’s important for us not to get caught up...

From the moment that the first ayah of the Qur’an was revealed – “Iqra!” – reading has been a foundational part of the Islamic tradition. The Qur’an was the first book established by the Muslim community, heralding the beginning of...

Senegal is navigating a major political crisis following President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s dismissal May 22 of his longtime ally and prime minister, Ousmane Sonko. The power struggle between the former allies raises significantly the risk of the West African state...

Something strange happened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival: A number of French films were greeted with loud boos and cries of “Fascist!” The audiences were not booing the films themselves, or castigating the films’ directors. Rather, they were responding...

Matt Kennard shows in his new book that the bipartisan War on Terror laid the groundwork for the Trump presidency and the rise of fascism — now, with extremists empowered, we face the consequences. In the United States, but also...

“Democracy” is a slogan, a value-judgement more than it is a description, and a term of praise and abuse in political debates more than a defined programme. Cross-posted from Aurelien’s substack “Trying to understand the world” Licensed under the...

The Islamic Society of San Diego Tragedy struck the Muslim community of San Diego in a murderous attack by a pair of armed teenagers who killed three people, including a security guard, before shooting themselves at a mosque on 18...

Dr. Mansoor Malik is a professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins. For most of his career, his work has been what you’d expect from a clinician-educator at a major academic medical center: healthcare worker wellbeing, peer support programs, minority physician...

A year after their brief war in 2025, both India and Pakistan are revving up their war frenzy. The drums of victory are being beaten with nationalistic zeal on both sides. The two nations teem with jingoism, a sense of...

Germany’s federal system of government makes the country’s politics seem so complicated that most people outside Germany give up trying to understand it. At the federal level, there is the parliament (the Bundestag), a ceremonial president and a chancellor. At...

The UK government used fake organisations and forged documents to disrupt its enemies and protect its interests amid the Cold War, declassified files show. The information comes in a series of highly sensitive files which were released to the...

As a retired Metropolitan police detective, I’m alarmed that senior officers might ban Palestine marches in central London in the wake of the Golders Green stabbings. Every march I have attended as a citizen has been nothing but peaceful....

Chairman of the American Conservative Union and former White House Director Matthew Schlapp recently offered a bit of illustrative wit. When asked about the 160 Iranian schoolgirls killed in an airstrike that a Pentagon probe and international human rights...

The Muslim Association of Canada has welcomed an expert’s review into the government revenue agency’s auditing practices, which found serious deficiencies that carried risks of “capturing innocent activity through associational connections.” The review comes after the Canadian Revenue Agency itself...

Credit: UNICEF/Giacomo Pirozzi   The niqab is a full-body Islamic piece of clothing, worn by some women in devout Muslim communities, and which covers the whole body, leaving only a narrow slit for the eyes. French full-body veil ban, violated...

The Indian state’s crackdown on independent Muslim voices continued when a court slapped three life sentences on an Islamic writer and Kashmiri activist, Asiya Andrabi, and two others, for what appears to have been more an attack on ideology rather...

A look at the Ottoman Empire’s rare and dramatic victory over the British at the 1916 siege of Kut, and what it reveals about colonial ambitions and Muslim resistance. By Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters A Rare Ottoman Victory The First World...

Without understanding the astonishing network of power exercised by the United Arab Emirates you would have no idea why the UAE was hit particularly hard by Iran in recent weeks. Nor would you know what fuels chaos from Libya to...

In late March , I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the court. In 2018, I...

The Weight of Symbolic Recognition When I saw the image, I stopped scrolling. A mosque with an American flag in front of it. The words across the bottom: Ramadan has officially been recognized in Washington. And then the...

A critique of how tech culture and venture capital are reshaping Muslim priorities, urging a return to spiritually grounded progress. “You will tread the same path as was trodden by those before you, inch by inch and step by step,...

Are we facing a global religious war? Or is this an opportunity to reestablish the relationship between revolutionary politics and religion? Paweł Mościcki is a professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the author...

No real estate crook should complete a project on time, let alone ahead of schedule, but Donald Trump wrapped up the Iran war years shy of the average American loss. Technically, after threatening a genocide, he...

Britain former PM shows there’s no price to be paid for engineering mass slaughter in the service of western empire. Which is why those crimes not only continue, but grow in scale Jonathan Cook is the author of three books...

Credit: Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto via AFP By Inés M. Pousadela MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 6 2026 (IPS) Bangladesh’s first credible election in nearly two decades delivered a landslide win for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its leader Tarique Rahman , son...

By: Wong Chin Huat - - - - Malaysia, having suffered through the global financial scandal involving Malaysia’s sovereign investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (IMDB) that brought down one of the world’s longest ruling parties, United Malays National Organization (UMNO),...

On Feb. 28 , videos emerged online showing the aftermath of the Iran war ’s opening strikes on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. In one video taken on Pastor Street, a few alleys away from the compound,...

Joe Kent’s resignation is not an anomaly but an alarm: elite dissent is surfacing early because this war is built on deception. Joe Kent’s resignation is shocking, but not for the obvious reason. It is not shocking simply because it...

President Donald Trump has issued fresh threats in the context of the Iran war. Despite his boasts that the Iranian military is annihilated, he is pushing for Washington’s European NATO allies to join U.S. efforts to break Iranian de facto...

From quiet household preparations to the crowded lanes of Old Delhi, Ramadan unfolds through prayer, commerce, community, and resilience amid a climate of communal polarisation. Photo essay by Omama A. Talha and Fatima Zohra. Home to 11% of the world’s...

The debacle that Trump and Netanyahu have gotten their nations into Cross-posted from Aurelien’s substack “Trying to understand the world” Photo: Screen Grab After last week’s excursion into culture and politics (and extra marks to those who spotted...