Monday Morning Haiku – Badr

 
 
 
 
 

The full moon called me from sleep
Face dripping water
Quietly chewing on dates

 
 
 
 
 

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The post Monday Morning Haiku – Badr appeared first on SeekersHub: The Compass Blog.

from SeekersHub: The Compass Blog http://bit.ly/2WE6G9z

High-profile Muslims have a right not to expect an inquisition | Nesrine Malik

Attacks on a young US congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, show Muslims are expected to prove their liberal credentials

There is an interrogation that begins whenever a Muslim assumes any role in the public eye, a sort of Muslim inquisition. One can be a writer or a politician or a chef, and be asked questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter at hand. Do you think homosexuality is a sin? What do you think of underage marriage? Do you think Israel has the right to exist? These questions are also asked in spurious surveys commissioned in the hope of generating headlines that suggest the majority of Muslims are violently homophobic, or conform to whatever latest trope is doing the rounds.

In the US, this persistent questioning continues despite the fact that Muslims are growing more liberal (specifically, more accepting of homosexuality than their white evangelical Christian counterparts) while simultaneously suffering increased levels of discrimination. But in the inquisition it’s the questions, not the answers, that are truly revealing.

All Omar had done to deserve this outrageous association was to express opinions on Israel

Related: Muslims demand full legal protection from Islamophobia

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from Islam | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2SkMCKd

Many people in mostly Christian countries believe values clash with Islam – poll

Almost one-third in UK see rift, finds survey ahead of pope’s visit to Arabian peninsula

Large numbers of people in Christian-majority countries in the west see a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of their nation, according to a survey.

However, significantly fewer people in the Middle East and North Africa view Christianity in the same way.

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from Islam | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2G4O7Gs

The Guardian view on the pope in the Gulf: an important signal | Editorial

As the first leader of the Catholic church to visit the Arabian peninsula, Francis knows his contact with Muslims will be as important as the mass he hosts for the Christian minority

Pope Francis’s visit to the United Arab Emirates this week will be greeted enthusiastically. Some 120,000 people are expected to turn out for his mass in a sports stadium in Abu Dhabi – as many as turned out in Dublin when he travelled to historically Catholic Ireland last year. The first visit by a pontiff to the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of Islam, highlights the complications of the religious situation in the Middle East, and more widely the issues of Christian-Muslim relations.

There may be as many as 2 million Christians in the Middle East today. Despite nearly 16 years of war and sometimes brutal persecution in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, many remain in the lands that were the cradle of Christianity. In part this is because it is still made as hard as possible for them to leave the region. The Christians of Iraq have largely been driven from their homes by persecution, as have some of the Christians of Syria, where a number have taken the side of the Assad dictatorship. But they have ended up in refugee camps rather than reaching notionally Christian Europe.

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from Islam | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2D3Z4nU