The COVID-19 pandemic is growing rapidly in Indonesia, which has one of the highest number of coronavirus cases in Asia. But with fewer than 100,000, the total number of confirmed cases is still relatively small compared to those in the United States.
Steps from the immense colonnade of St. Peter’s Square, Sarwar Jahan stood next to his souvenir stand. A dark, clean-shaven man wearing a navy blue jacket and a black knit cap, Jahan is one of the legions of peddlers selling trinkets of the new Pope Francis to tourists and pilgrims.
Hundreds of people in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore attacked the city’s predominantly Christian Badami Bagh neighborhood on March 9 and set fire to homes after accusations that a Christian man had committed blasphemy against Islam's prophet, said a police officer. On March 11, 2013, a protest rally with more than two thousand Christian participants, led by the Rev. Humphrey Sarfraz Peters, Bishop of Peshawar marched from the St. John’s Cathedral, Peshawar to the Peshawar Press Club passing through the busy Sadar Bazar.
Qais Shaghasi learned to play guitar from how-to videos on YouTube and kept hidden his passion for what many here regard as “un-Islamic” music.
Sayed Mohammad Jawad Al-Qazwini was 12 years old when his family fled Iran and settled in Los Angeles. Now 28, he sat with some 70 Shiite Muslims at the Iman Islamic Center on a recent Friday night, preaching about the Mosque of the Trash Picker in Iran, and a Turkish mosque peculiarly named “As if I have eaten.”
Does Islam forbid dancing? While Islamic scholars are divided on the answer, it’s easy to find Muslims in America and abroad who love to boogie down.
Mohammed Labadi had a lot at stake when the DeKalb City Council voted May 29 on a request from the Islamic Society of Northern Illinois University to build a two-story mosque.
When Adil Imdad’s 28-year-old cousin died of cancer in Ohio two years ago, the family’s grief was compounded by the absence of Muslim ritual following her death. There was no imam nearby to handle the religious customs, no Muslim funeral director to supervise the washing of the body, no Muslim cemetery where the family could lay her to rest.
At this point in 2011, 22 state legislatures had either passed or were considering bills to prohibit judges from considering either Islamic law, known as Shariah, or foreign law in their decisions.
What a difference a year can make.
A recent spate of campus controversies involving professors who made provocative statements about Muslims shows one of two things: a decreasing tolerance for inflammatory speech, or how easy it is for academics to get into trouble.