Ed Webb Religion & Politics Seminars

A leading Iranian cleric has urged authorities “to listen to the people”, as protests ignited by a young woman’s death in morality police custody show no sign of letting up.

“The leaders must listen to the demands of the people, resolve their problems and show sensitivity to their rights,” said Grand Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani in a statement posted on his website Sunday.

The powerful 97-year-old cleric has long been aligned with the country’s ultra-conservative establishment and strongly backed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on several occasions — notably during the 2009 protests against the reelection of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

British Muslims have been reduced to ‘second-class’ citizens in the United Kingdom, according to a report published by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) on Sunday. 

Recently extended powers have given successive UK governments the power to remove citizenship from those who have access to another nationality. They “almost exclusively” target Muslims with South Asian heritage

“The message sent by the legislation on deprivation of citizenship since 2002 and its implementation largely against British Muslims of South Asian heritage is that, despite their passports, these people are not and can never be ‘true’ citizens, in the same way that ‘natives’ are,”

Almost 30 years ago, then-Prince Charles declared that he wanted to be a “defender of faith,” rather than simply “Defender of the Faith,” to reflect Britain’s growing religious diversity. It created a bit of a storm in a teacup, as he had clearly not meant that he would be changing the traditional role so much as adding to it. The new King is a particular type of Anglican: one that on the one hand, is incredibly tied to the notion of tradition; but on the other, has shown a great deal of affinity for both Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Islam, two religions clearly outside the Anglican fold that he must now titularly lead.

the King has been quite public about his admiration for Islam as a religion, and Muslim communities, both in Britain and abroad.

Privately, he’s shown a lot of sympathy for where Muslims are in difficult political situations, both in Europe and further afield. Robert Jobson’s recent Charles at Seventy claims that the King has significant sympathies for the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, for example. It’s also claimed that he disagreed with dress restrictions imposed on Muslim women in various European countries.

umrah

The man, who was wearing a generic white pilgrimage costume, held a banner handwritten in both Arabic and English saying, “Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, may Allah grant her a place in heaven and accept her among the righteous people.”

People generally take photos while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, and sometimes that includes shoutouts and banners with different messages, but security has been tightened after an Israeli journalist snuck into the Hajj, the major Muslim pilgrimage, in July.

Powerful Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is said to have announced a hunger strike until the violence and use of weapons stops, Iraq's state news agency INA and state TV reported late on Monday.

At least 10 Iraqis were killed on Monday after powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said he would quit politics, prompting his loyalists to storm a palatial government complex in Baghdad and leading to clashes with rival Shi'ite groups.

When Prime Minister Victor Orban recently spelled out his vision of Hungary's frontiers, he joined a club of expansionist leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping, and members of the Indian power elite who define their countries’ borders in civilisational rather than national terms.Speaking on Romanian territory in the predominantly ethnic Hungarian town of Baile Tusnad in Transylvania, a onetime Austro-Hungarian possession home to a Hungarian minority, Mr. Orban echoed the worldviews of Messrs. Xi and Putin.

a worldview also embraced by members of India’s Hindu nationalist elite that endorses a country’s right to expand its internationally recognized borders to lands inhabited by their ethnic kin or territories and waters that historically were theirs

Mr. Modi has approached Indian Muslims, the world's largest minority and its largest Muslim minority, in much the same way that Mr. Orban envisions a racially and religiously pure Hungary

the ReAwaken America Tour, which has been kind of a rolling campaign for revolt since the failed coup. Led by former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, the 15 rallies held since April 2021 have each drawn thousands of attendees. Like “Stop the Steal” events, they tend to be foggy, distortion-infused affairs, full of dire warnings of hidden evil and worse to come

a disturbing religious dimension has received far less attention; that is, until November, when Flynn blurted out their broad intention at a San Antonio rally, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” 

Impresario and tour director Clay Clark introduced Lance Walnau as a prophet when he spoke at the event in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2022. Walnau is an important figure in the neo-Charismatic New Apostolic Reformation, best known for his advocacy of the idea of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which is a vision of Christians gaining control over the main sectors of societal influence—namely, religion, government, family, arts & entertainment, business, media, and education.