A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation on May 25 said a Kansas bill signed into law by Governor Sam Brownback, which critics say is designed to target Shari’ah, “invites” a legal challenge. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the Kansas anti-Muslim bill is one of dozens of similar pieces of discriminatory and unconstitutional legislation that have been introduced nationwide. These legislative initiatives are prom...

A majority of Iranian lawmakers on May 19 urged world powers to respect Iran’s “rights” in crucial talks next week in Baghdad over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme. Of the 290-member Parliament, 203 MPs called on the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, the so-called P5+1 group, to also seek “co-operation” with Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported. “The P5+1 should respect the rights of the Iranian nation,” the MPs...

Bashar Assad’s forces are driving away Sunnis from residential districts in Homs to replace them with ethnic Allawites, according to a prominent member of the Syrian National Council (SNC). The regime forces have reportedly combed Homs districts in recent months to track down opponents. The planned cleansing took place in several Sunni districts of the city: Karam Al-Zaitoun, Karam Al-Louz, Adwiya, Mureeja, Wajab Al-Jandali, Tadmur, Bab Al-Dareb and Zahra, the official said, adding that...

US President Barack Obama told G8 leaders meeting at Camp David that Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power, and pointed to Yemen as a model of how political transition could work there. Ben Rhodes, an Obama deputy national security adviser, said the recent focus on securing access for UN monitors and keeping track of ceasefires had distracted from the fundamental problems in Syria, where Assad, whose father ruled the country before him, has been attacking protesters for 14 months.

Egyptian soldiers beat and tortured protesters they had arrested at a demonstration near the Defence Ministry this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on May 19, citing victims and lawyers. The New York-based group said soldiers arrested at least 350 protesters, including 10 children and 16 women, on May 4 amid violence over a sit-in begun a week earlier in protest at the exclusion from Egypt’s presidential race of Hazem Abu Ismail.

Military prosecutors ordered them detained pe...

The son of slain Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto said that ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf “murdered my mother,” as he vowed to play a bigger political role in his homeland “in any way I can.” Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of President Asif Ali Zardari, said Musharaff sabotaged his mother’s security when she returned to her homeland in 2007, and said he is confident of his own security in Pakistan. “I’m confident that the Pakistani government will pr...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia received a number of people who pardoned killers of their family members at his palace on May 24. In a unique humanitarian gesture on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the king’s accession to the throne, family members of 13 victims came from various regions of the Kingdom to announce their forgiveness to the murderers. They told King Abdullah that they have taken the decision with the sole purpose of winning the pleasure of God, and that was in re...