Five times a day Muslims are called to prayer, or salaat. And in many parts of the Muslim world that still means hearkening to the sound of the azaan, the call to prayer, which is sung, whether on a recording or live, by a muezzin. Perhaps one of the ways to think of the azaan is as the song Muslims […]
“In our visual era, which images are to be trusted? Those of Tahrir Square in January and February, where Muslims and Copts displayed their brotherliness, the other was accepted, and National Union was sacred? Or, conversely, those of last October 9th, with raging six-ton armoured vehicles, mercilessly crushing and killing Coptic protesters? The images of burnt churches?” An historian glances […]
“The interest with which the Catholic Church is following the dynamics of the inclusion of residents and citizens of the Muslim religion into the European context, both at individual and community levels, was confirmed during the meeting of delegates for relations with Islam from the European Bishops’ Conferences. It is a complex process not lacking in ambiguities, from which emerges […]
“Islam gives a structure to society and society structures itself around what Islam represents. This role changes according to the historical context and to the tensions affecting the world, but it never disappears. What is happening today in our world is precisely this, in other words a reformulation of the Islamic religious identity in relation to life’s great questions today.” […]
“The plural society of the early part of the 21st century is characterised by a fundamental contradiction, namely the concurrent exaltation of cultural differences and the equality of differences. The culture of globalisation comes with the idea that we are all different, and yet all equal. . . The question then becomes, Have we really reached a point in history […]