Islam - Page 22

Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry says it is setting up “a new museum” to house the Hagia Sophia’s “portable icons and Holy relics” indicating that the former cathedral’s Christian relics and iconography will be removed from the site, the Greek City Times reported Friday.

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) announced in a Tuesday statement that it would cover up images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ in the Hagia Sophia, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, now that it has been converted into a mosque.

At least 356 Nigerian soldiers fighting Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria have reportedly requested retirement citing “loss of interest,” Sahara Reporters revealed on Sunday.

Boston Celtics star Enes Kanter condemned the conversion of the Hagia Sophia, once one of the most important Christian cathedrals in the world, in an interview Sunday, accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of converting what was officially a museum in a desperate bid to win votes.

A report compiled by members of the French Senate has detailed the spread of political Islam across France and listed 44 proposals to combat radical Islamist ideology.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – The interim secretary-general of the World Council of Churches has written to Turkey’s president expressing his “grief and dismay” over Turkey’s decision to change the status of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.

When four Muslim suicide bombers blew themselves up during the infamous 7/7 atrocities of 2005, 52 people died and more than 700 were injured.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed Wednesday that it had seized a shipment in Newark, NJ, containing $800,000 worth of human hair originating in Xinjiang, China, where the Communist Party maintains concentration camps.

The government of Turkey issued a statement Wednesday saying Ankara was “shocked” at a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

ISTANBUL — In its more than 1,400-year existence, the majestic domed structure of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul has served as the Byzantine Empire’s main cathedral, a mosque under the Ottoman Empire and a museum under modern Turkey, attracting millions of tourists each year.

TEL AVIV — Protesters at an anti-annexation rally in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Sunday were heard shouting anti-Semitic chants including calling for a “war against the Jews in the streets” and warning Jews the “the army of Muhammad will return.”

An Iranian refugee and Islamic State “fanatic” was jailed for inciting two Islamists, who arrived in Germany during the migrant crisis, to commit a mass act of terror by driving into a crowd in Germany and hacking to death any survivors with meat cleavers and swords. He told the migrants to commit the act of terror to show the victims that “Islam is here”.

Three people have been stabbed to death while sitting in a park in Reading, England. OK – so when do the protests start?

Saudi Arabia has banned international visitors from making the annual Islamic pilgrimage, or Hajj, this year in a bid to control the spread of the coronavirus.

At least eight global companies identified as benefitting from China’s enslavement of Muslim minorities published statements celebrating Juneteenth, an American holiday marking the end of slavery in the country.

President Donald Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act into law on Wednesday, requiring sanctions on Chinese officials participating in the mass incarceration of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the country in concentration camps, where they reportedly endure slavery, rape, organ harvesting, and other atrocities.

An Egyptian gay rights activist arrested in Cairo for raising the LGBT rainbow flag at a concert in 2017 and subsequently imprisoned and tortured has taken her own life, the Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.

Sweden’s supreme administrative court has upheld an order for a Muslim youth group to repay government grants after it was ruled to not “respect the ideas of democracy”.

A Greek resident of the island of Lesbos has filed a complaint after discovering illegal migrants had built a makeshift mosque on her property that is located near a notorious migrant camp.

TEL AVIV – A prominent Saudi cleric who was the first Muslim to be honored for his contribution toward fighting antisemitism vowed to fight “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Jews against the scourge.

RIYADH — — Saudi Arabia is expected to scale back or call off this year’s hajj pilgrimage for the first time in its modern history, observers say, a perilous decision as coronavirus cases spike.

TEL AVIV – Turkey’s top religious official vowed over the weekend to continue Islam’s struggle “until Jerusalem is completely free” and called on the Muslim world to rally against Israel.

Non-Muslims in Iran suffer persecution at the hands of the government, including imprisonment, torture, and execution, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2019 Report on International Religious Freedom.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has chosen Jakarta’s first Christian governor of Chinese descent, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, as a top candidate to oversee the construction of a new capital city in the majority-Muslim country, the Nikkei reported on Friday.

India has denied visas to a team from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which had requested entry to India to assess religious liberties in the country, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims extends beyond China’s borders and into foreign countries, with Beijing ordering Chinese diplomats to “harass and intimidate” members of the ethnic group in Japan, the U.S. State Department’s 2019 Religious Freedom Report on Japan revealed on Wednesday.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov announced he will donate 10.3 million Russian rubles ($131,500) to men struggling to purchase brides under Chechnya’s Islamic law amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Moscow Times reported on Wednesday.

The State Department accused Indian officials on Wednesday of permitting, and sometimes promoting or participating in, mob violence against Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in its annual religious freedom report.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again exploring ways to convert the Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul into a mosque, Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported on Tuesday.

Police in India’s northern Rajasthan state are investigating messages between three staffers at a private hospital in which they allegedly talked about refusing to attend Muslim coronavirus patients.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) revealed on Thursday that Chinese officials in Xinjiang have begun proceedings to destroy yet another Uyghur cemetery in the heart of the Uyghur homeland, Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi.

TEL AVIV – Iran, Russia, China, and Turkey are celebrating the “collapse” of the U.S., the Jerusalem Post reported, with the aim of furthering their own economic interests and engaging in an Middle East arms race.

TEL AVIV – Saudi Arabia and Israel are holding secret negotiations to allow Saudi representatives to join the Waqf Islamic council that controls the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, according to a report Monday by the Israel Hayom daily.

The Iran parliament’s newly elected Speaker Mohmmad Baqer Qalibaf said Sunday the Islamic system is “an important power in the region” that has grown to be a force on the world stage destined soon to evict U.S. military “terrorists” from the Middle East.

Authorities in Blackburn said they will “take action” over a gathering of Muslim men praying in the streets which constituted a “serious breach” of coronavirus lockdown measures.

A London based Islamic group, which purports to be a “human rights organisation”, has had an advertisement claiming the Chinese coronavirus is an act of revenge from Allah pulled from Facebook.