e-Journal Edition: April 2015

  The Houthi takeover of Yemen and the ousting of elected president Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi has done more than illuminate the fragile nature of Yemeni politics and the critical role that nation plays in the Gulf, but recent events also illuminate old regional conflicts, notably between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Saudi impressively pieced … Continued

When President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan changed the names of the months and replaced cinemas with puppet theatres in 2000, almost ten years had passed since the demise of the USSR and the search for a new ethos by the Central Asian leaders reluctant to break away from the Soviet past. Resorting less to geography … Continued

  I sat down with Sufi and Co-Director of the Association of British Muslims, Paul Salahuddin Armstrong to ask him about Sufism, Islamophobia and Muslim responses to extremism.   Define your Sufism Sufism itself is not really the correct term. The original term is Tasawwuf (inwardness), and Tasawwuf is the traditional science of purification. It … Continued

Michel ‘Aflaq’s biography Michel ‘Aflaq, the founder of the Ba’th Party, was an atypical personality in the Arab world: he was a thinker, a philosopher, and a teacher inspired who with his ideas an entire generation of young Arab men. Has was born in 1920 in Damascus from a Greek-Orthodox family. His parents were involved … Continued

The quest for providing a framework in which a modern Islamic state should assume, particularly along democratic lines, has long been a debate raging amongst Muslim scholars, religious jurists, liberal reformers, political figures and authors. This debate spurred the Islamic modernist movement of the nineteenth century with prominent figures such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad … Continued