Posts under ‘Law and Human Rights’

Where can someone start with the story that has occupied Egyptian news media outlets for the past few days? It sounds so outrageous and so sad. How can a 32-year-old pregnant woman get murdered in a courtroom in Germany in full view of  witnesses? But it did happen and now Muslim communities around the Middle [...]

The following video from NBC Nightly News features our guests from that radio show — author of The Taqwacores Michael Muhammad Knight and drummer for the Kominas Imran Malik. The video highlights other individuals and bands who are also struggling to articulate this new Muslim punk genre of music and what it means to a mainstream audience.

The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog recently posted video of a two-part conversation with Asra Nomani, journalist, Muslim activist, and feminist. She is also part of the upcoming documentary The Mosque In Morgantown about a Muslim community in West Virginia.
“On Faith” hosts the blog of another prominent Muslim-American voice, the founder of the Interfaith Youth [...]

Guest Post – A recent sharia-for-peace deal between militant groups and the civilian government in Pakistan’s quasi-autonomous Swat region has ignited interest in the status of Islamic law in Pakistan.

Soon after religious authorities outlawed yoga earlier this year, Muslim women asked, “what next?” Irritated and outraged by their mistreatment and angered by the horrors of domestic violence, hundreds of Muslim women from around the world gathered last February in Malaysia. This global meeting marked the official launch of the Musawah movement for equal rights [...]

Social networks such as Facebook are increasingly used to organize political demonstrations like this April 6, 2008 strike and promote their coverage in mainstream news reports.

As has been much discussed, government support of faith-based initiatives calls into question the separation of church and state. The worry is that federal funds may go to businesses whose hiring or service provision discriminates against people with different religious beliefs.

A listener of our radio series with Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders critisizes the Women and Sharia program for whitewashing the real issues.

The documentary film A Jihad for Love follows the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims living in places around the world, including Egypt, Iran, India, Turkey, Canada, and France. The film follows these individuals in underground subcultures for homosexual communities in Muslim countries and as immigrants to the West where their lifestyles are more acceptable in public.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this video, not the titillating and voyeuristic elements, but what it might say about the interaction between interpersonal relationships and religion in Iran and elsewhere. Does this controversy change your opinion at all? Is this just another example of government-level hypocrisy that we see all over the world or does it have some special meaning in the context of Iran?