Posted inBusinessEnvironmentEqualityGender violenceGeneralHealthLifestyleMediaNews/PoliticsSportTech

Minara

Recently, in Johannesburg, I caught up with Shaheen Hoosen, from the Minara Chamber of Commerce, and was pleasantly surprised to find a chamber of commerce guided by Islamic principles for the Muslim community, involved with both business development and trade development. Intrigued by the idea of such a specialised chamber of commerce, I prodded the […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Islamic fundamentalism in the information age

In the second volume of his monumental three-volume study on the information age titled The Power of Identity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), Manuel Castells addresses (as the book’s title indicates) the different ways in which a sense of collective identity is configured at a time when the so-called “network society” has emerged, concomitantly with the global communication-technological […]

Posted inGeneralNews/Politics

How should one understand the rise of ‘fundamentalism’?

With the current wave of “terrorist” attacks, not only in France, but in other parts of the world such as Nigeria and Mali, too, “fundamentalist” organisations have become the focus of many questions, including the one concerning the reason why (particularly young) people join these despite risking their lives in the course of performing their […]

Posted inEqualityNews/Politics

Paris again: Has Huntington’s thesis been vindicated?

The recent events in Paris (not long after the Charlie Hebdo attacks), which have understandably shocked everyone who values peaceful interaction between people of different cultural orientations, will no doubt fuel renewed intercultural distrust instead. This is to be expected, particularly after reports that one of the attackers might have entered France a few weeks […]

Posted inGeneral

Road to Purdah-tion

A news dramatisation by Alex Searle Although you are a fully qualified doctor, sharia law dictates that a woman’s place is at home. Your children are waiting to be picked up from school but you are not allowed to drive. The rancid sweat beneath your abaya (women’s covering) offends your husband’s friends. They don’t care […]