Muslim schools in UK continue to improve in their GCSE results, according to The Muslim News’s most comprehensive Muslim school table. For the third consecutive year Muslim high schools and colleges advanced on their previous results and surpassed the national average. Seventy-two Muslim schools (36 girls’, 23 boys’ and 13 mixed) are featured in the table. Sixty-eight per cent of students who sat their exams in Muslim schools attained at least 5 or more A* to C pa...

Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, defended the non-disclosure of US intelligence in the case of the alleged CIA torture of a British resident now in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp insisting it would damage national security. In a Parliamentary statement, Miliband also rejected suggestions that the US had threatened to “break off” cooperation with the UK if it had made public documents on the US treatment of 30-year old Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed. The Foreign Secretary was...

Thirteen members of the British Muslim community have been awarded for their varying contribution to society in the New Year’s Honours. They are as under:

Knights Bachelor: Judge Goolam Hoosen Kader Meeran, for services to the administration of justice. Order of British Empire (OBE) Civil: Salima Hafejee, Dir, Bradford Youth Development Partnership, for services to community relations in West Yorkshire. Dr Musharraf Hussain, Dir, Karimia Institute, for services to communit...

The Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG) is to publish the country’s first magazine on Islamic banking, which is one of the eight new Arabic magazines to be published by the group. The group is also to launch its political-affairs title, Al-Majalla, as an electronic magazine starting April 1. SRMG has appointed Abdulwahab Al-Faiz editor-in-chief of the Islamic banking magazine, which will be published by Al-Eqtisadiah business daily. Adel Al-Toraifi has been nam...

Britain’s top Palestinian charity has been cleared for the third time of any alleged links with so-called terrorist organisations. In a 52-page report the Charity Commission dismissed allegations made over two-and-a-half years ago by the BBC’s Panorama documentary series claiming that Interpal funded partner organisation that promoted terrorist ideology. It concluded there was “not enough evidence to support the allegations.”  Interpal responded to the findings ...

Europe’s top courts have ruled in favour of a French school that expelled two Muslim girls for refusing to remove their headscarves for physical education classes. The ruling fuels the debate over secularism in France. The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a complaint by two French Muslim girls that their school violated their freedom of religion and their right to an education. The girls were expelled after repeatedly refusing to remove their headscarves for physical educa...

German state bans on religious symbols and clothing for teachers and other civil servants discriminate against Muslim women who wear the headscarf, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report. The 67-page report, “Discrimination in the Name of Neutrality: Headscarf Bans for Teachers and Civil Servants in Germany,” is based on extensive research over an eight-month period. It analyses the human rights implications of the bans and their effect on the lives of Muslim women teachers, ...

United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has donated $2.5 million to support Victorian bushfire victims. Sheik Mohammed has given $1 million to the Victorian Racing Industry fund for volunteers who helped fight the fires. And he pledged a further $1.5 million to assist communities around his breeding operation near Seymour. Sheikh Mohammed’s world breeding operation Darley runs a stud at Northwood Park that employs more than 100 people. The Victoria Rac...

EU member states bear a share of moral responsibility for detentions in Guantanamo, the European Parliament has said. It accused 14 members of cooperating with the US in the kidnapping or transport of terror suspects. The European Parliament denounced members’ involvement in extraordinary renditions in a resolution approved with a 334-247 vote.

The resolution, which was welcomed by Amnesty International, comes two years after the parliament’s report on European comp...