Collectively blaming groups for the actions of individuals can license vicarious retribution. Acts of terrorism by Muslim extremists against innocents, and the spikes in anti-Muslim hate crimes against innocent Muslims that follow, suggest that reciprocal bouts of collective blame can spark cycles of violence. How can this cycle be short-circuited? After establishing a link between collective b...

Addressing the cultural and religious beliefs around the issue of family planning has been a big challenge for the international development community. The concept of family planning has raised some concerns regarding its acceptability within Muslim populations. While some Muslim states and organisations have adopted a rather cautious approach to the issue, others have gone to the extent of inv...

Article New Labour’s Policies to Influence and Challenge Islam in Contemporary Britain: A Case Study on the National Muslim Women’s Advisory Group’s Theology Project Author Chris Allen Department of Social Policy, Sociology & Criminology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK [email protected] Abstract The creation of the National Muslims Women’s Advisory Group (NMWAG) in 2008 by ...

One of the many disastrous consequences of the tragic events of 9/11 is the war waged by the neocolonialists in order to “liberate” Muslim women. This gender-based war stands on a series of pillars, such as the presumption that Western civilization offers women a great deal of privileges, while Muslim culture gives none. Therefore, it would be logical to suppose that, because of the many opport...

BACKGROUND Multiple demographic, genetic, and environmental factors differ between Muslim and Jewish infants in Israel. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether, after adjustment for perinatal factors associated with mortality, excess mortality occurs in very low birthweight (VLBW) Muslim compared with Jewish infants. DESIGN The Israel National VLBW infant database includes data on 99% of all VLBW bir...

This article explains the level of economic freedom in Muslim countries through the theory of institutional path dependency. Islamic countries are generally not free and they have a poor record regarding property rights. To explain these realities we use the institutional history of Muslim countries. We define three steps: the Arab and Ottoman Empires when Islamic law was of great importance, E...

We construct a unique geocoded dataset on temples, dynasties and battles in medieval India and propose a test to identify the motive for observed temple desecrations in that period. We test two competing historical narratives of temple desecrations. The first focuses on the idea of iconoclasm, i.e. destruction of religious sites and imagery deemed heretical, as embedded in Islamic theology. The...

The rapid Arab-Islamic conquest during the early Middle Ages led to major political and cultural changes in the Mediterranean world. Although the early medieval Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is now well documented, based in the evaluation of archeological and historical sources, the Muslim expansion in the area north of the Pyrenees has only been documented so far through textual sou...