Scholarly men and women strive to achieve great knowledge by attending college and working towards a degree. Many students know exactly what field of study they want to excel in and they have high expectations of becoming a creative, productive human being. Choosing to achieve excellence is wise but

As we focus on our vocation as workers during this Workers Day, which is also celebrated as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, it is time for us to reflect on the apostolate of labour. This also invites us to reflect in worker that was present in Jesus Christ the Worker. Jesus Christ started his wo

‘JIHAD’, with its imbued wrong meaning, became a notorious word in the West after 9/11. Terror now has an overwhelming presence in parts of the Muslim world, including Pakistan , Afghanistan and Iraq . Violence there seems at times to be out of control as it is Muslims themselves who are targeted by

With the twin goals of student development and promoting knowledge and understanding vis- à-vis the Arab world, the Model Arab League (MAL) draws around 2,000 American students to 14 annual conferences nationwide. Megan Geissler, the MAL Programme Coordinator who engineers these conferences, says th

Science fiction fans may remember how humans and aliens communicated with one another using a five-tone musical motif in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The movie was also one of the first to portray space aliens as friendly – albeit different – neighbours, rather than enemy invade

The arts profoundly reach our common core, transcend cultural barriers and link us together for a greater good. These are the reasons why Genesis at the Crossroads, a Chicago-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to bridging cultures through the arts, created The Saffron Caravan Quartet, a m

Contrasting with the general pessimism regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 77-year-old former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah continues to believe in harmonious Christian-Muslim coexistence in Palestine and shared his thoughts with reporter Laurent Grzybowski.
What is the si

Mike Abel is the author of this work and retains all rights in this work
When you have personal victory in any situation, your spirit lifts and you feel good about yourself and about nearly everyone around you. When you have private pain, you need the time and the space to cope and work through the

In the context of Allama Mohammad Iqbal, today the contradictory couplet, ‘reverence and relevance’ engenders Shakespearean ‘saucy doubts’ quite pathetically. For, if we substitute ‘and’ with ‘versus’, then all the combinations sound irksome at some point on a plane with the coordinates ‘reverence a

(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand/Noor Mohammad Sikand)

Suicide attacks have become a fairly frequent phenomenon today. Many of them are the handiwork of disgruntled Muslim elements. Indeed, in some countries what are known as fidayeen attacks undertaken by Muslim groups have become so co

The way mainstream media has covered major events of the past two decades leaves much to be desired. After the 9/11 attacks, rigid, insular debates and discussions too often replaced free and open discourse, creating an environment ripe for the rise of blogs.
The prominence of a “good” versus “evil

Except for a casual mention of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands and the tensions they recently caused in US-Israeli relations, my Passover Seder last week was very spiritual –another adventure for this Muslim.
After 9/11, as some Americans started to learn more about Islam, I emba

Across Europe, discussions are taking place about what local Muslim women wear – specifically the niqab (face veil), burqa (a garment that covers the body, head and face) and the hijab (headscarf). More recently the debate has been taken up in the Canadian province of Quebec. And, as in Europe, the

When is a terrorist not considered a terrorist? When the US media identifies him or her as a “Christian". And when is a terrorist group not considered a terrorist group? When the US media calls it an "anti-government militia".
Exceptionalism is alive and well when it comes to reporting on violence

The educative value of literature can not be denied. Real education does not mean that you are passing a few Universtiy examinations. Education is not simply an equipment to enable us to near our means of livelihood .True education lies in the development of one's intellectual and spiritual faciliti