I would like to introduce you to two people. The first of these was called Iohannes Glafchyrno. Glafchyrno appears in the historical record...
By Tahir Abbas Turkey is a beguiling country. It straddles one of the most important geopolitical fault lines in the world. Since the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the republican era, however, the nation has undergone…
By Necati Polat Who are the Gülenists ostensibly behind the failed Turkey coup of last July, when, for the first time in Turkish history, soldiers led by a large cabal within the military did not hesitate to bomb the parliament and…
By J.N.C Hill The start of the Arab Spring has raised numerous searching questions about the study of the Maghreb. Scholars of the region are grappling with an intriguing and largely unacknowledged paradox: that the theory that arguably did most…
“There are Muslims in China? I didn’t know that.” Yes, indeed, there are—possibly as many as 25-30 million souls—and they constitute a fascinating segment of two vital world entities, “China” and “Islam.” Almost half of them speak Chinese as their…
By Deanna Ferree Womack Images of Islam abound these days, and many of them are troubling. Those who speak loudly and most forcefully define Islam in the narrowest of terms, making one image – the militant extremist – into a…
Written by Ghada Karmi, this extract is one of a hundred featured in Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora, edited by Yasir Suleiman. Now available in paperback for £16.99. For most of my life, being Palestinian has been…
The collapse of the Ottoman empire in the wake of the First World War a century ago did not merely redraw the political map of the Middle East in its modern form – itself so hotly contested today by forces…
So when will Islam undergo a reformation? When will Muslims catch up with modernity and join the 21st century? Why is Islam such a violent religion (while others are supposedly so peaceful)? Why are Muslim women so oppressed? When will…
Western Europe experienced the immigration of people from a Muslim background after World War II who settled in countries like France, Britain or Germany to fill the labour shortage and made important contributions to the economic recovery of Western European…