Christian religious and community leaders in occupied Palestine have launched an ecumenical campaign aimed at enlisting Christians around the world to help end the Israeli military occupation. “This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine,” says the 15-page document.

“We, Palestinian Christians, declare in this historic document that the military occupation of our land is a sin against God and humanit...

US President Barack Obama is facing accusation of creating impunity framework for former officials implicated in authorising torture. “The (former president George W.) Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture,” Jameel Jaffer, National Security Project Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement. “Now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity.”

Obama has promised to close the...

Egypt has begun the demolition of a new hospital built by Muslim Brotherhood for the poor in the capital over what it called the building’s ‘unsafe’ edifice. The decisions to tear down the 250-bed Islamic Medical Association’s Central Charity Hospital built with a burgeoning budget in Cairo comes over the seven-story building’s height. “These demolitions are being carried out on buildings higher than the expected range, raising safety concerns,” loc...

In a major move to end a simmering crisis that threatened to torpedo their peace deal, Sudan’s political rivals on December 13 announced an agreement on terms of a referendum on the independence of the south. “With this agreement, we announce the end of the crisis between the two partners,” Pagan Amum, Secretary-General of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), told a press conference. He said the agreement sets the terms of the 2011 referendum on the independenc...

Prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), has won Malaysia’s prestigious “Hijra of the Prophet” award. Qaradawi will be given the award by Malaysian King Mizan Zainal Abidin in a ceremony on the first day of the new hijri year which falls on December 18.

He will deliver a speech during the event, to be attended by ministers, statesmen and public figures, on the mission of Prophet Muham...