Egyptian Secular Writer Battles Religious State
2018
CAIRO, Egypt  - An Egyptian feminist writer and  teacher forced into exile by Islamic militant death threats for  half the 1990s says state suppression of secular thinkers means  she still has to go abroad to work.
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Turkey is navigating between the forces pulling it closer to Islam and the institutions that safeguard its secularism.
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As Islamic conservatism rises in Syria, one Muslim scholar rejects Islam's 'monopoly of salvation.'
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Clashes between Muslims and Christians over claims that two brothers had opened a church in their southern Egyptian home have killed one Muslim and injured three, while 23 people have been detained, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
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By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD CAIRO, Egypt - Heba Kotb is a conservative Muslim, wears an Islamic head scarf, and goes on television once a week to talk - frankly and in great detail - about sex.
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Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has accused opponents of the Islamic-style headscarf for women of trying to sow division in secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey.
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Turkey's military has a tradition of interfering in politics, even staging several coups in past decades. But on Wednesday, the chief of the secular armed forces kept a low profile on one of his country's most explosive issues: the Islamic head scarf.
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Abdullah Gul, a religious man in the secular realm of Turkish politics, hopes to persuade the establishment that it has nothing to fear from his candidacy.
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RAMALLAH, West Bank -- As the young editor of Hamas's weekly newspaper, Sari Orabi is a careful monitor of what he describes as the "surprisingly frank" debate underway within the party that took control of the Palestinian Authority just over five months ago.
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A debate over an anthropologist's book on ancient Hebrew history isn't just academic &#151; it's spilled over into an online dispute between critics trying to keep her from getting tenure and supporters who say the effort stifles scholarly freedom.
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A French court case shining light on the gray area where free speech and religious sensitivities overlap opens on Wednesday when Muslim groups sue a satirical magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
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GAZA CITY -- The secular Palestinian party Fatah, routed in the Gaza Strip by rival Hamas forces nearly three months ago, has begun to use political protest and reassemble its armed wing in order to resist the Islamic movement's tightening hold here.
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In a new book seen as a prelude to a presidential bid, France's finance minister is taking up the thorny question of how to reach out to an increasingly assertive Muslim minority and integrate it into a largely secular society.
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Keith Ellison, who will become the first Muslim member of Congress next month, has offended some conservatives with his plan to use the Quran during his ceremonial swearing-in. The decision by Ellison, D-Minn., to use the Muslim holy book for the ceremony instead of the Bible triggered an angry column by Dennis Prager on the Web site Townhall.com this week.
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CAIRO -- A contemptuous editor hemmed in by only his suspenders, Ibrahim Issa has been sued more than once for "humiliating the president." It's a distinction he rather likes, given that in the last two years he has written 84 unflattering columns about Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
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The work of a professor at the University of Alabama Law School has prompted some other scholars to scour religious texts to explore the moral basis of tax and spending policies.
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Imagine a pious Muslim faced with a ban on fabricating a certain kind of weapon. He is committed to obeying unquestioningly the fatwas of his religious leader and yet discovers that producing