أرشيف الوسم : people

South African Muslim academic Taj Hargey has pledged to go ahead and start a woman-friendly and gay-friendly mosque in his country, despite receiving several death threats over the issue. Taj Hargey is the director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, an organization of “forward thinking” Muslims; Hargey says that his Open Mosque will welcome people of all sexual orientations, …

UN Human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein said that smugglers accused of sinking a boat, causing the deaths of around 500 migrants, are probably guilty of “mass murder” and should be put on trial. “The callous act of deliberately ramming a boat full of hundreds of defenseless people is a crime that must not go unpunished. If the survivors’ …

Extremists from the Islamic State (IS) have captured several villages around the city of Ain al-Arab thanks to heavy weaponry, as they closed in on the third largest Syrian town, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said on Thursday. “IS fighters have seized at least 21 villages around Kobane”, the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said, referring to the town …

Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Wednesday said that Syrian regime air strikes on a rebel-held town have killed 48 people in the past two days. “On Tuesday, 25 people, including seven women and a child, were killed in air strikes on Talbisseh, in Homs province”, the monitor said, adding that a rebel commander was among those …

On Tuesday, the United Nations mediated a Palestinian-Israeli deal on the import of construction material to the Gaza Strip to ensure that they will not be diverted by Hamas members, a UN envoy said. UN envoy for the Middle East Robert Serry said that the agreement on oversee the supply of construction material “must get up and running without delay”. …

Muslims in the city of Fort Saskatchewan have been the target of communal attacks this week as communal tensions grew following the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. A home used by the members of the local Muslim community once again had to be cleaned up after it was vandalized with anti-Islam slurs for the second time in the week. Speaking …

On Tuesday, branches of the Al-Qaeda in North Africa and Yemen called for extremists in Syria and Iraq to unite against the threat of the US-led coalition to battle extremists in the Middle East. In an unprecedented joint statement, the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula urged their “brothers” in Syria and Iraq to …

A total of forty-three former and current Israeli military reservists signed a letter vowing to no longer be a part of operations against Palestinians. In the letter, they address the operations of Unit 8200, which is said to carry out electronic surveillance. According to the letter the intelligence gathered by the unit was mostly concerning innocent people and used to …

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki moon, in his annual report to the UN General Assembly on the issue of human rights in Iraq, said that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s pledges for greater freedom in the country has not led to major improvements of freedom of expression or human rights. In a report obtained by Reuters, he also expressed concern over the …

On Thursday, US President Barack Obama said that the US will intensify its sanctions in energy, finance and defense sectors to punish Russia for its “illegal actions” in Ukraine, as the EU said that it could lift the new sanctions if the ceasefire in Ukraine continues. In his statement, Obama said that the move will worsen the Kremlin’s deepening economic …