by Norman Vasu*
Here is a brief report on two recent Fatwas from Malaysia that are raising some eyebrows.  The first one was issued on October 23, 2008.  Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council released an edict banning “tomboys” in the Muslim-majority country. The mufti of Malaysian state of Perak, Harussani Idris Zakaria, maintained that the Council was [...]

by ZS Justus

A recent audio recording from al-Qaeda #2 Zawahiri sends a series of “messages” to President-elect Barack Obama. News outlets have quickly grabbed one of the more provocative excerpts from the recording, Zawahiri’s labeling of Obama as a “house negro.” Several blogs have followed suit including hotair, gateway pundit, commentary magazine, the moderate voice, [...]

by Mark Woodward*
(Yogykarta, October 2008) Accounts of the “War of Words” or the “Battle for the Soul of Islam” or whatever else one choose to call the ideological struggle between “radicals” and “moderates” in the Muslim world tend to focus on elite level intellectual discourse that is largely divorced from the daily realities of Muslim [...]

by Bud Goodall
A recent report in The Huffington Post showed once again how much trouble foreign journalists can have in translating colloquial Americanisms:
That problem faced Al Jazeera reporter Abderrahim Foukara when he wrestled with how to describe “maverick.” The world’s most watched Arab network finally decided to define the American colloquialism as “a bird that [...]

by Steven R. Corman

Nothing you can do will hurt me, I am indestructible.
Black Sabbath, “Kiss of Death”

One of the more interesting stories I’ve heard lately is about Heavy Metal music becoming big in the Muslim world.  Earlier this week, Mark Levine posted a guest blog on the subject at Post Global.  Levine, who is a  [...]

by Mark Woodward*
In wars that are as much about ideas as they are about anything else, it is convenient to have enemies that are clearly defined, easily demonized and clearly distinguishable from real or imagined allies. When none are apparent we all too often imagine them. Referring to our opponents in the “Global War on [...]

by Emy Matesan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first visit to Germany in the beginning of February illustrates the “Islamic dilemma” Western European countries currently face. In front of a predominantly German audience, Erdogan had emphasized the need to better integrate the Turkish minority. He stunned Chancellor Angela Merkel when he suggested that Germany [...]

by Robert Poe
The recent resurfacing of the Muhammad cartoon controversy brought to mind a lecture about belief given about two years ago by the prolific Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. For those uninitiated, Žižek is a contemporary, widely published philosopher who attempts to bring together a Marxist-Leninist critique of late-capitalist society with an understanding of [...]

By: Z. S. Justus
A recent large-scale poll by the Gallup organization has painted a picture of the Islamic world that may be surprising to many Americans. The group surveyed 50,000 Muslims in 40 countries representing over 90% of the world’s Muslims. In a forthcoming book authors John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed report on many of [...]

by Ed Palazzolo

Senior Hezbollah leader, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed Tuesday, 12 February 2008, by a car bomb in Damascus.
Mughniyeh has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for over 20 years. Mughniyeh was an intelligence leader for Hezbollah’s secretive military branch, he was believed to be responsible for taking Western hostages in Lebanon, he had [...]