Mosque lawyer claims town officials wrote ‘shocking’ anti-Muslim emails
BERNARDS TWP. — Township officials involved in the decision to block construction of a proposed mosque routinely disparaged Muslims and Islam in emails from their personal accounts, according to a court filing in a lawsuit over a dispute. Excerpts from emails, along with quotes from a township employee’s online diary, were included in a pre-motion […]
Yasmin Seweid and the Pressure on Many Muslim Girls
Yasmin Seweid, a Muslim teenager who made international headlines after she claimed to be the victim of a hate-filled attack on the New York City subway earlier this month, was arrested on Wednesday after admitting to fabricating her story. She was arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court early Thursday morning and appeared to be in shock, […]
Report: Islamist Terrorism Is Long-term Threat at Home, Abroad
Islamist terrorism will never be fully eradicated, and the threat to the U.S. homeland is real: These are among the sobering conclusions of a new U.S. Institute of Peace study that traces the origins and evolution of Salafist jihadism, a phenomenon it says blindsided the U.S. in September 2001. “The Jihad Threat: ISIS, Al Qaida […]
This BBC reality show has a very basic message: Not all Muslims are the same
Around 2.7 million people in Britain today identify as Muslim — around 1 in 25 people. In the media, they are often portrayed as a single, unified community. But a new BBC TV series is challenging that notion. “Muslims Like Us” is a social experiment in which 10 Muslims of different ages, genders and ethnicities […]
Egypt’s Christians in the cross-hairs
It is a haunting image. A grieving Egyptian woman in a headscarf wipes tears from her eyes. But this woman is not a Muslim. She is a nun and she is standing amid the debris of the pews which were blown up during Sunday’s grotesque bombing of St Peter’s Church (el-Boutrosiya, in Arabic), which adjoins St Mark’s Cathedral, the seat […]
Why Nostalgia Dominated 2016’s Politics
The political decisions of 2016 will influence our future for many years, if not decades, to come and yet they were primarily influenced by the past. From Nigel Farage’s “We want our country back” in the British EU referendum to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again ” in the U.S. presidential elections, the emphasis was […]
Assad: Trump Could Be ‘Natural Ally’ Against Extremism
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad believes that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could be a “natural ally” against extremism, he said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. Commenting on Trump’s campaign remarks about defeating extremist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS), Assad said that if his American counterpart can “really act against terrorism, I believe that […]
Sister Of Teen Who Lied About Muslim Hate Crime Responds, Denouncing Police And Media
UPDATE: 11:03 a.m. EST – The sister of a Muslim woman who lied about being attacked in a New York City subway station over her religion posted a response about her sister’s arrest and subsequent fallout on Facebook. Sara Seweid said she didn’t know why her sister, Yasmin, had lied. The police should not have been involved, […]
New York City Muslim Hate Crime Was A Lie, Police Say
An 18-year-old Muslim college student who filed a police report Dec. 1 telling authorities she had been harassed and assaulted by three white men in an anti-Muslim hate crime on a New York City train was arrested Thursday when she admitted the whole ordeal was a lie. Yasmin Seweid was booked Wednesday after she came […]