Growing a beard, or shaving it off, are unrelated to Sharia (Islamic) law, according to a fatwa (religious edict) issued Monday by Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, and published today in Youm 7 newspaper. The fatwa quotes the late prominent Egyptian religious scholar and Islamic theologian Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltout as saying everything relating to
The recent marriage of a 90-year-old Saudi man to a 15-year-old girl has sparked condemnation from human rights and social media activists in the kingdom. On Twitter especially, activists criticized the parents of the girl for giving her to a man decades older than her. In an interview, the groom insisted that his
A furious municipal councillor in Le Havre has demanded an inquiry after 8,500 servings of chocolate mousse were thrown away by cafeterias at 67 schools in the region around the city. The desserts, destined for students at primary and elementary schools, were discarded last week because they contained pork gelatin, according to reports.
Police at the Grand Mosque in Mekkah arrested on Thursday a man found carrying papers that show he is looking for a Jewish woman to marry, according to a report by the daily al-Hayat newspaper. Lieutenant Abdulmohsen Maiman, spokesman for the Grand Mosque police, told the paper that the 49-year-old Saudi national could be
A car bomb killed at least 20 Shiite Muslim pilgrims at a bus station in the Iraqi town of Mussayab on Thursday, at the peak of a Shiite religious commemoration. The blast erupted late in the afternoon in the town which is about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of the Iraqi capital. It targeted
A24-year Indian student in Bonn was brutally attacked by Islamic extremists who slashed his tongue when he refused to convert, German police said Thursday. The Indian student was attacked on Christmas eve when he was on the way to his place in Bonn. The men enquired about his religion and asked him to
Iran has ordered domestic airlines to take off half an hour after pre-dawn Muslim prayers, the website of country's civil aviation organization quoted its chief as saying on Wednesday. "According to a directive we issued to the domestic airlines, from now on the airlines will be authorized to take off at least 30 minutes
The Muslim Waqf is continuing to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount in a direct violation of a ruling by the Supreme Court, a new report released Monday finds. The author of the report, archaeologist Tzachi Zweig-Devira, told Arutz Sheva that his report is based on a personal visit he made to the
A fabled caravan town on the edge of the Sahara desert, Timbuktu was for centuries a key center of Islamic learning and has become a byword for exotic remoteness in the Western imagination. Today it is a battlefield, overrun by Islamist militants controlling northern Mali who have been razing its world-heritage religious sites in
A professor of Islamic Shariah at al-Azhar University warned on Sunday that Salafi Islamists were seeking to undermine the role of the acclaimed institution and accused them of seeking to spread their “radical and extremist ideas.” Ahmed Karima’s statement came after Salafi Leader Yassir al-Burhami said his group succeeded in including in the constitution
