TEL AVIV — In a highly unusual ruling, a judge in Lebanon has ordered three Muslim men to learn passages from the Quran by heart that praise and glorify the Virgin Mary after they were found guilty of insulting the religious figure, according to a report by the Al Arabiya television network.
TEL AVIV — Saudi Cleric Ahmad Bin Qassem al-Gamedi caused a firestorm in Saudi Arabia for ruling that Muslims are allowed to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Thousands of Saudi women are now enjoying the right to attend football matches among other basic improvements in women’s rights under the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s modernization program.
TEL AVIV – President Donald Trump is not convinced that either Israel or the Palestinians are committed to peace, he said in an interview Sunday with Israeli daily Israel Hayom.
In yet another sign of rapprochement with the Persian Gulf states, a group of prominent US Jewish organizational leaders led by Malcolm Hoenlein will travel in the coming days to the United Arab Emirates.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the totalitarian Islamist ruler of Saudi Arabia, is due to visit London in early March, groups have claimed.
TEL AVIV – What was being hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough in Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel was shot down before it even began with the Gulf Kingdom’s denial that it had given permission for Israel-bound flights to use its airspace.
Naif Abdulaziz M. Alfallaj, an immigrant from Saudi Arabia who has been living in Oklahoma for years, was arrested on Monday and charged Tuesday with visa fraud and making false statements to the FBI. At issue was his attendance at one of al-Qaeda’s most notorious training camps in 2000 — the same camp that trained four of the 9/11 hijackers.
Contents: Maldives president arrests Supreme Court justices to get favorable court ruling; Maldives crisis pits India vs China in the Indian Ocean
The only individual in the United States convicted over his involvement in the 9/11 attacks has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump over claims he is experiencing “psychological torture” while kept in solitary confinement.
General Nasser al-Dhaybani, a senior commander for Yemen’s internationally recognized but deposed government, predicted in an interview with Sky News on Monday that the government is winning the brutal four-year Yemeni civil war, and could recapture the capital city of Sanaa from Iran-backed Houthi insurgents very soon.
Saudi Arabia’s arbitrary detention of political and free speech activists without charge should end its membership of the UN Human Rights Council, according to two British lawyers.
Saudi authorities announced on Tuesday that all detainees held at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in the anti-corruption crackdown have been released. Some detainees charged with more serious crimes have been moved to regular prison facilities.
WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. President Donald Trump failed to broach any subject using the terms “radical Islamic terrorism,” “jihadist,” or any of their variations during his first State of the Union address (SOTU), refusing to use phrases some of his advisers have tried to discourage the commander-in-chief from using in the past.
Clashes have broken out in southern Yemen between two groups respectively backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, countries within the coalition fighting against the Iranian-supported Shiite Houthi rebels.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, perhaps the highest-profile member of the Saudi royal family to be detained during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s anti-corruption crackdown, has finally been released from detention after reaching an unspecified financial settlement with the Saudi government.
Contents: Clashes erupt between Saudi and UAE backed forces in South Yemen’s port of Aden; Brief generational history of South Yemen
Police blocked dozens of women from attending a soccer match Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in what activists said they hoped would have been the first such permission under Hamas’ rule.
TEL AVIV — Arab countries recently made contact with prominent personalities and Palestinian officials who live in Jerusalem with the goal of changing the Palestinian leadership to officials who would accept the Trump administration’s Mideast peace deal, an official from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party claims.
Contents: Egypt’s presidential election becomes a farce as opposition candidates are forced out; Tensions rise between Egypt and Ethiopia over Nile River dam
A beauty contest in Saudi Arabia disqualified twelve camels after their owners were found to have used Botox to make them look more handsome, Reuters revealed.
WASHINGTON — The United States has ordered more stringent inspections of air cargo from five Middle East countries, citing a June 2017 attempt in Australia to bring down a plane as evidence that terrorist groups continue to target civilian aviation.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) administrator David Pekoske issued an emergency order Monday requiring stricter scrutiny of U.S.-bound cargo on flights from five majority Muslim countries.
The latest report from the International Energy Agency finds American oil production at its highest level in 50 years and projects that it will surpass that of Saudi Arabia and Russia in 2018.
Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday that it is transferring $2 billion to the central bank of Yemen to shore up the Yemeni riyal, which has depreciated alarmingly as the civil war in Yemen drags on.
U.S. President Donald Trump “thanked” Qatar for allegedly turning over a new leaf by taking “action to counter terrorism and extremism in all forms,” the White House revealed this week in a readout of a recent call between the American commander-in-chief and the Muslim country’s emir.
A ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s armed Houthi group towards Saudi Arabia’s southern Jizan region was shot down by Saudi forces on Tuesday, Saudi state TV Ekhbariya reported.
The Ritz-Carlton Riyadh will reopen to the general public in February after three months of serving as a temporary detention center for royals, officials, and businessmen caught up in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s anti-corruption crackdown.
At the heart of Saudi Arabia’s recent cultural and political upheaval is an understanding that the country must become more compatible with the Western world, and more hospitable to foreign investment, in order to manage the transition away from an oil-based economy with limitless deep pockets. Possibly the trickiest aspect of this transformation will be an Islamic reformation in the notoriously strict kingdom.
Prince Abdullah bin Saud bin Mohammed was named president of the Saudi Marine Sports Federation in October. His tenure came to an abrupt end after three months on Wednesday, when he was sacked over his criticism of royal arrests seen by skeptics as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to consolidate power.
SAUDI police have arrested young men who were sprayed with confetti in a “gay wedding video”. Mecca police made the arrests after the men were seen walking side by side on a carpet at an outdoor festival in the holy city.
TEL AVIV – Saudi Arabia is considering purchasing Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system in an effort to counter the threat from Iran, prominent Swiss paper Basler Zeitung reported this week.
Sweden, a big donor country that has recognized Palestine as a state, warned Tuesday that any US decision to withdraw funds to the UN agency for Palestinians would be destabilising for the Middle East.
Iran’s foreign minister on Monday warned neighboring countries against fomenting unrest after anti-government protests roiled the country over the past two weeks.
Contents: Rohingya ARSA attack on Burma (Myanmar) police complicates fantasy repatriation plans; Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh continues to grow
A football match scheduled for this Friday in Saudi Arabia will mark the first time women in the Gulf kingdom have been allowed to venture to a sporting event.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Sunday that the nation and its security forces have ended the wave of unrest linked to anti-government protests that erupted last month.
Saudi Arabia’s attorney general on Sunday confirmed 11 princes had been arrested after protesting the kingdom’s austerity measures and would face trial after “disrupting public peace and order”.
Contents: Iranian advisors are ‘on the ground’ with Houthis in Yemen, supplying weapons and intelligence; Forces realign in the Yemen war following the death of Ali Abdullah Saleh
Two months after a sweeping series of arrests and temporary detentions made in connection with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s corruption probe, the fate of perhaps the biggest fish caught in the net remains uncertain: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the most wealthy, famous, and well-connected men in the world.
