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Michael Christopher Low's book Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj is a fascinating account of the Hajj pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city of Makkah ("Mecca") during...
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Last week, the outgoing US Secretary of State and former head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, announced a flurry of last-minute sanctions against rivals and foes China, Cuba and...
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Kahlil Gibran is regarded as the third-best-selling poet of all time after Lao Tzu and William Shakespeare, largely because of his book The Prophet. First published in 1923 it...
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Exiled Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi announced the formation of a new unity government on Friday, just over a year after the power-sharing agreement was signed with the...
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The single main story of the year has without a doubt been the coronavirus pandemic which has thus far claimed over 1.5 million lives around the world amid encouraging...
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If the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition's war on Yemen was known as "the forgotten war", the 2011 anti-government protests in Bahrain soon became "the forgotten uprising". Forgotten in the sense...
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According to most accounts, Taha Hussein, one of Egypt's most esteemed writers and intellectuals and a giant in modern Arabic literature, was born on 14 November, 1889, in the...
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Recent events in France have once again pushed the notion of a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West onto centre stage. Last month the satirical magazine Charlie...
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The 13-year arms embargo imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council expired on Sunday in accordance with Resolution 2231 of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly...
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Israeli actress Gal Gadot confirmed yesterday that she will be playing the role of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra
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The renewed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region has the propensity to draw in regional powers such as Iran, Russia and Turkey, and thus become a...
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Although the Arabic phrase literally means “God willing” it is also popularly used in an informal way across the Middle East to denote something that is unlikely to happen.
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Whilst literature on Israel's state violence against Palestinian children is nothing new, there are apparent limitations on the current discourse which tends not to extend beyond theories of childhood...
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The world's largest population of Shia Muslims outside Iran is found in neighbouring Pakistan where they account for an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the population. Although...
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Most people would agree that it is important for parents to instil a sense of national and cultural identity in their children in order to preserve their heritage for...
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The recent meeting in Beirut between Hamas and Hezbollah leadership where the threats to the Palestinian cause and normalisation between Israel and Arab states were discussed is the latest...
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The agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel to establish full diplomatic relations in exchange for the suspension (or from Israel's point of view, merely the postponement) of...
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When one thinks of contemporary political Shia Islam the Islamic Republic of Iran tends to spring to mind, a theocracy which those familiar with the subject know is based...
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The Hagia Sofia Grand Mosque was opened for public worship last Friday for the first time in 86 years following a top court's ruling that the historic building, originally...
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In the year 751 CE, the largely Arab-Persian army of the Abbasid Caliphate met the Chinese imperial forces of the Tang Dynasty on the banks of the River Talas...
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Turkey's top administrative court, the Council of State is likely to announce today the restoration of the Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque reversing an 86-year-old decree...
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Israel's involvement in the Yemen war throughout its five year duration is an open secret. In 2015, when the Saudi Arabian Embassy in the capital Sanaa was seized by...
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Turkey achieved a strategic success in breaking the year-long siege on the Libyan capital, Tripoli. With Turkish support, the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) pushed back the forces...
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Sectarianism is a salient feature of contemporary warfare in the Middle East, especially in multi-religious societies. The ongoing conflict in Syria is no exception. The rapid online spread of...
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A prominent Saudi cleric, Shaikh Assim Al-Hakeem, has come under fire on Twitter over his response to a question posed to him by a user regarding the permissibility of...
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The scenario is all too familiar: the almost casual murder in Minneapolis of an unarmed African American citizen — say his name: George Floyd —by police officers has sparked...
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Last Friday, 22 May, was Unity Day in Yemen, a national holiday marking the unification of the North and South which took place on that date in 1990. The...
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Much has been written about the growing rifts between the Shia seminary cities of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran, centred on the role of politics and religion....
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Last week, Germany finally caved in to US and Israeli pressure to ban Hezbollah outright by outlawing the Lebanese movement's political wing. Berlin declared the group to be a...
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Nizar Qabbani is arguably the most popular and widely read poet in the Arab world, renowned particularly for his poems on themes such as religion, love and femininity, which...
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Sheikh Mahmud Shaltut was a renowned Muslim scholar, reformer and rector of the esteemed Al-Azhar University in Cairo who was notable for seeking to bridge the gap in the...
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The combined impact of the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia and the fall in demand for crude oil during the coronavirus pandemic has led to the collapse...