Zabiha News

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!“There is a new wall in the downtown heart of the Holy City. It is, in fact, a new security fence. It is not tall, nor built to last. But the wall, and what it protects, may do more [...]

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“The prayer room is abuzz with an insectoid hum where more than 30 young boys sit cross-legged on the floor, reciting lines from Korans propped on wooden desks in front of them. Some recite quietly to themselves, others chant more loudly while swaying rhythmically back and forth. But one in the front of the room [...]

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“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has rescinded the death penalty against a Turkish barber convicted of “cursing” the name of God.
Sabri Bogday, who cuts hair in the port of Jidda, was sentenced to beheading for swearing during an argument with his neighbor, a tailor.
Turkish media reported that Turkey’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia [...]

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“They gathered by the green steel-span bridge, where nearly 1,000 people died three years ago in a stampede set off when rumors spread through a crowd of pilgrims that a suicide bomber was in their midst.
On Tuesday, buoyed by renewed hopes for their country’s future, clerics, politicians and ordinary citizens crossed the Two Imams bridge [...]

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When Hala Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic?
Saudi Arabia’s most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were OK.
That has left [...]

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“Muslim and Vatican officials are holding historic talks in Rome to establish a better inter-faith dialogue and defuse any future tensions.
Catholic-Muslim ties soured after Pope Benedict XVI’s speech in 2006, in which he linked Muslims with past violence.
The speech provoked Muslim outrage and triggered violent protests.
It also prompted leading Muslim scholars to [...]

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“American Muslims have been called the “outcasts” of this presidential election. Muslims themselves have told the media that Islam is being treated as “political leprosy”, a “scarlet letter”, or the “kiss of death”. In Pittsburgh, a city with a large Muslim population, the Guardian team heard sentiments like these when we attended a lecture by [...]

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“Ayatollah Mohamed Ali Al Taskhiri has denied supporting the revival of the Fatimid state, as announced by the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The Fatimid state was an Islamic Shiite Caliphate that ruled over varying areas of Morocco, Egypt, and the Levant, from 909 to 1171 AD.
Speaking from the Iranian capital Tehran, Taskhiri, who is [...]

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“A gallery showing inflammatory images of veiled Muslims, including a bare-breasted woman partially clad in a burqa, is under police surveillance after being attacked earlier this week.
Windows and doors at the SaLon Gallery in west London were smashed after a series of abusive, anonymous phone calls and angry protests about the images from Muslims. The [...]

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“Jack Shaheen, a sort of one-man anti-defamation league, is the author of the groundbreaking work “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” which is also the subject of a documentary film. A former CBS News consultant on Middle East Affairs, Shaheen is one of the world’s foremost authority on media images of Arabs and [...]

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“Preliminary estimates from the floods in Hadramout and al-Maharah put the death toll at 184 with 100 others still missing.
Seventeen hundred houses were damaged, and ten thousand people have been displaced in the last three days.

The total cost of the damage is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of YR.
The government has [...]

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“Critics worry that the rise of Salafists in Egypt, as well as in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, will crowd out the more liberal and tolerant version of Islam long practiced there. They also warn that the doctrine is only a few shades away from that of violent groups like al-Qaida [...]

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“On “Meet the Press” today, Colin L. Powell concluded his endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama by referring to the death of a Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq on Aug. 6, 2007, and whose remains were buried in Arlington.

He and three other soldiers, including a corporal from [...]

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“A Muslim community was opening the first mosque in Germany’s formerly communist east on Thursday despite a steady stream of protests from local residents and far-right demonstrators.
The Khadija Mosque — built by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community — is a two-story white structure capped with a 13-meter (42-foot) silver dome in Berlin’s Pankow district.
Most [...]

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“Many young Muslims in the U.S. clash with their parents over the issue of arranged marriages. There are tensions involving family traditions and the yearning for independence.
Take Mediha Sandhu. The 25-year-old sits in an Internet cafe, texting on her phone. She’s still single, living with her family in Bayonne, N.J., and her whole family is [...]

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