Recommended Articles

“Rather Turkish Than Pope”, European Islam Already Exists For Centuries

By Omar Sayadi 2020-01-27
The narrative that Europe is the sole result of a Judeo-Christian tradition with roots in ancient Greek and Roman antiquity needs to be swept aside, once and for all. By no means was there in Europe at any point up until the Second World War an example of cultural, religious or social unity. On the contrary! The continent has always been a patchwork of warring tribes, feudal kingdoms and modern nation states that had in most cases little more in common than their shared geographical position on the European land mass.

More than one third of Europe was under strong Islamic influence for several centuries; in the west, the Iberian Peninsula known as al-Andalus and in the east, Greece and the Balkan all the way up to Vienna…

Is Al-Azhar Pushing the Envelope?

H.A. Hellyer, 4 March 2020
Al-Tayyib repeated the standard line that renewal [of Islam] is a traditional (turathi) imperative – not one that was absent until imposed by modernity. Much of the rest of his comments were aimed at establishing that indigenous pedigree, and insisting that the tradition itself demands renewal – but using its tools and paradigms, rather than importing an external frame of reference.

In valorising the tradition’s own internal processes in this way, al-Tayyib was taking a clear stand vis-à-vis the overall idea of ‘religious renewal’ – not denying its importance, but placing it within the overall structure of normative tradition.

Zionism, Judaism and the Jewish State of Israel

By Lynda Burstein Brayer
November 27, 2018
Western thinking and intellectual endeavor is very much epitomized by formality, rationality and clear boundaries or limits. These qualities no doubt derive from the Aristotelian philosophical and analytical basis of Western Christendom, in which…
This existential distinction between the Jew and the goy is reflected in the absence of a Jewish universal moral code, an absence which is not found within either Christianity or Islam.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50676.htm

The Absolute Right of Palestinian Resistance

By Lynda Burstein Brayer
November 20, 2012
Once again the bombs are falling on the Gaza Strip, a stretch of territory excised from Palestine proper as a result of continuing illegal and illegitimate actions by Israel. In fact, Gaza has become a closed ghetto,…
https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/20/the-absolute-right-of-palestinian-resistance/