An Indonesian regency has passed legislation requiring schools to teach boys and girls separately and hopes to follow that up with a ban prohibiting the two sexes from riding motorcycles together...More
Congo-Brazzaville has banned Muslim women from wearing the full face-veil in public, citing security reasons, an Islamic association told AFP on Saturday. "The Interior Minister (Raymond Zephirin...More
Alcohol has resurfaced as a controversial issue in Algerian politics, with ultra-conservative Muslims angered by plans to liberalise sales in a country torn between respect for Islam and freedom of...More
Amnesty International s ays Syrian government forces and insurgents have both committed abuses in the contested northern city of Aleppo, but that some of the government's actions amount to crimes...More
Two "Charlie Hebdo" journalists have rejected any suggestion of similarities between a deadly attack on the French satirical magazine and a failed armed assault on a Mohammed cartoon event in Texas...More
The UN's cultural body has awarded its annual press freedom prize to Mazen Darwish, a Syrian journalist and rights activist who has been jailed by the regime for more than three years. Darwish was...More
Police shot dead two gunmen outside a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas on Sunday. The event was attended by controversial Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, authorities said. While no...More
Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel are among the writers who have agreed to be table hosts at tomorrow's PEN American Center gala after six authors withdrew in protest at an award being...More
Cartoonist Luz, who drew the front cover picture of Mohammed for "Charlie Hebdo" following the massacre of the satirical weekly's editorial team by jihadists in January, has told a French magazine...More
The case of a 15-year-old Muslim girl who was banned from class twice for wearing a long black skirt seen as too openly religious for secular France has sparked an outcry. The girl was stopped from...More
Greek Cypriots unveiled measures on Tuesday to boost trust across the ethnically divided island, and announced that rival leaders would hold their first meeting in months on 2 May. Peace talks...More
The Nigerian military announced on Tuesday that it has freed 200 girls and 93 women from the hands of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. But the more than 200 girl students kidnapped from their...More
Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz replaced his younger-half brother with his nephew as the next in line to the throne of the Gulf monarchy, in a middle-of-the-night reshuffle of the government...More
Gelatine-based sweets and packets of chicken soup that fall foul of halal laws are disappearing from Pakistan's shop shelves as the country looks to clean up its Islamic food credentials to boost...More
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ordered an investigation into the killing of prominent rights activist Sabeen Mahmud, who was shot dead minutes after she hosted a seminar on abuses in...More
Germany's parliamentary speaker said this morning that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago was genocide, adding that Germany's own past makes it important to speak out. Norbert...More
Morocco has launched a campaign to encourage organ donations that will include a programme to train imams to teach that the practice is not contrary to Islam, the country's health minister said this...More
India's government took Al Jazeera news channel off the air on Wednesday for five days after officials insisted it had repeatedly shown wrong maps of the disputed Kashmir region. Al Jazeera in India...More
The UN Security Council is set to push for more intensive negotiations to settle the decades-old dispute over Western Sahara, at the centre of tensions between Morocco and African countries. A draft...More
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the Islamic State group is Moscow's greatest enemy, notwithstanding the strained relations with the United States over the Ukraine conflict. "I...More
Malaysia's government faced calls on Tuesday to take action against Muslim protesters who pressured a church to remove its cross, the latest example of rising Islamic intolerance that is fuelling...More
US forces have no reason to think Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was wounded in an air strike against an Iraqi target last month, the Pentagon said Tuesday. British daily "The Guardian"...More
Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was jailed for 20 years on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 attacks on people protesting against his rule. By Pol O Gradaigh Although...More
Young people in Arab nations are rapidly losing faith in the revolutions of recent years and are questioning whether democracy can take hold in their countries, a new survey released Tuesday shows...More
The European Union has denounced the slaughter of at least 28 Ethiopian Christians in an Islamic State (IS) video as a "criminal" effort to create religious divisions. "This not a clash of...More
German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier on Friday refused to label as genocide the massacres of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. "Past atrocities cannot be reduced to a...More
Feuding over an Islamic penal code that stipulates stoning for adultery and amputation for theft has put a spotlight on Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's struggle to secure the majority Muslim...More
Nobel-winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa on Sunday praised Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women's rights advocate and leading critic of Islam, calling her "one of the most valuable" adversaries of "...More
A group of Calgary imams is marking the first line of defence at the foot of the Rocky Mountains against the Islamic State group's recruitment of Canadians as fighters. Several imams issued a...More
Iran is to appoint its first female ambassador abroad since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The post will go to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, one of Iran's most high-profile female...More
Indonesian Islamic parties have proposed legislation banning alcohol consumption that could see offenders jailed for up to two years, lawmakers said on Tuesday, the latest bid to crack down on...More
Pope Francis uttered the word "genocide" on Sunday to describe the mass murder of Armenians 100 years ago, sparking fury from Turkey which slammed the term as "far from historical reality". In a...More
A verdict in the case of three Syrian activists accused of "promoting terrorist acts", including leading dissident Mazen Darwish, has been set for 15 April, their lawyer said on Monday. "The head of...More
Two student activists have been shot dead in Bangladesh, police said Monday, as the largest Islamist party tried to enforce a nationwide strike to protest at the execution of a senior leader. There...More
Islamabad on Sunday hit out at the United Arab Emirates for condemning a parliamentary vote by Pakistani lawmakers to stay out of the conflict in Yemen, in a rare display of discord between the two...More
Italian prosecutors are seeking justice for Pakistani immigrant women allegedly killed because they refused marriages imposed by their parents. The cases highlight differences, often misconstrued as religion-based, between centuries-old immigrants’ cultural traditions and Western values prizing individualism.
