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SHAFAQNA –Three UN Special Rapporteurs addressed in a letter to the Bahraini Govement “conceing” information about alleged pattes of continuous discrimination against Shia citizens (mainly Bahaa and Ajam), which have been taking place since 2011, and which are “undermining their rights to freedoms of religion, expression and culture;” in addition to the effect of the whole situation on the human rights of Shiites in the country. The address published recently on the website of the commissioner was officially sent to the Govement of Bahrain at the end of October 2015 to enquire about the reports which the UN rapporteurs deemed conceing. The Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights,...

SHAFAQNA –If Yemen remains synonymous with unrest and violence thanks to the military deluge Saudi Arabia has insisted on drowning the impoverished nation under since late March 2015, Terror had yet to claim its fill of blood. Terror as it were never could assert its warped religious rationale onto Yemen – not beyond a few clusters, not to the point where Terror could ever present any real existential threat to the Yemeni Republic. This was then … today is a brand new day! Today, Saudi Arabia is actively working to change that reality! Saudi Arabia I would add, absolutely needs for Terror to become Yemen’s newest existential threat to counteract that which is now threatening its own. For al...

SHAFAQNA-Do you know what your tears look like at a microscopic level? Dutch artist Maurice Mikkers does, and he’s been looking at hundreds of them. It seems that our tears can be as unique as snowflakes, and have a similar crystallised look under a microscope. Mikkers was a lab technician before he went to art school, and has yet to find two tears that look alike. He’s also investigating how temperature, humidity, and even the cause of the crying can influence a tear’s structure. “[A] dark field microscope will light up the tear on a black background, so you can actually see the beautiful pattes and shapes,” Mikkers says in the Quartz video above. “I think tears are so unexplored. We need ...

SHAFAQNA- Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the biggest scourges there is among infectious diseases, killing nearly 2 million people a year, most in developing countries. It is also notoriously hard and slow to detect in places without top-flight health care systems. Yesterday, researchers reported at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting here that they’ve devised a simple new way to diagnose TB, and even distinguish living TB cells from dead ones, which could give doctors an easy way to see whether their anti-TB medications are working. The researchers are now putting their diagnostic through its paces with samples from patients in South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest incidenc...

SHAFAQNA –The relationship between Saudi Sui and Shia has always been characterized by conflict. Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia are a minority group that account for 10 to 15 percent of the population in a mainly Sui country. The Shia communities in Saudi Arabia are mostly concentrated in the Easte Province, where the population is estimated at 33 per cent. Since the 1980s, the nature of the conflict transition from military confrontation to the Saudi Shia’s movement for equal rights and affirmation of their culture. (Al Rasheed 1998). Saudi Shias are working establish their community in a Sui society that punishes their religious expression, limits their political participation and civil lib...

SHAFAQNA – The Grand Ayatollah Sistani answered a question about feeding children in day nursery in non-Islamic country. Question: I live in France and have a two year old son who goes to a day nursery and eats lunch there. From the start I requested that no meat must be given to him because the meat is not slaughtered according to Islam, and so far there was no problem. But recently my son sees that at lunch time the rest eat meat and he also asks for meat, if in day nursery he asks, can he be given meat which is not slaughtered according to Sharia or not? The Grand Ayatollah Sistani: There is no problem, unless it is pig’s meat. Source: PERSIAN SHAFAQNA SHARE Facebook Twitter ...

SHAFAQNA –Our times are times of great upheaval and injustice! Regardless of what faith, if any, anyone holds I don’t think that anyone will disagree with my statement. And while humanity has faced many periods of great hardship, I don’t think any period of our History has been more absolutely violent, and bent on crushing the human spirit. Our times are times of labelling, shaming, and aihilating … Society today has a desperate need to categorize and arrange people, communities and faiths according to a very strict set of rules – one which screams of bigotry, ignorance and arrogant ego-centrism. Muslims in this sick equation have suffered most of all I would say – often by their own hands,...

SHAFAQNA – The Grand Ayatollah Shahroodi answered a question about the allowed sound level of call to prayer (Adhan) from a Mosque. Question: Please specify the allowed sound level of call to prayer from the minaret of the Mosque. Considering that by using the electronic devices the sound of call to prayer can be amplified many times, what is the allowed sound level which can be broadcasted? It is reminded that the sound level for those neighbours nearer to the Mosque is more than the usual level especially at the time of the dawn when the sound of the surrounding area is less and this has caused criticism. The Grand Ayatollah Shahroodi: There are no religious obstacles in using the mentio...

SHAFAQNA –The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, expressed deep conce about the Bahraini security authorities’ summoning of Head of Religious Freedom unit at the Bahrain Human Rights Observatory, Sheikh Maytham al-Salman. “I am very conceed by reports that talk about the Bahraini authorities summoning Maitham Salman for interrogation on August 14, 2016, and I am observing this matter closely,” he said in a tweet on his official Twitter account. Sheikh Salman said that he had received a call from the security authorities asking him to be present for interrogation Sunday (August 14, 2016) without informing him of the...

SHAFAQNA-The value of wisdom and moral is when it sets out of its leading springs to make its way in life to plant goodness, beauty, and love, and to uproot evil, corruption, and hatred. The individual who wishes to spiritually build his ier self wholly has to search for the wisdom whereby he discovers his shortcomings which distance him from virtuous humanity, and he has to look for the moral which brings him closer to his Lord and which deepens the roots of iman within him. This is the value of wisdom and of moral, and this is their plentiful product. It is the dividing line between the man of righteousness, and the man of evil. Good wisdom is the one which sows within the depths of the i...

SHAFAQNA –(Delivered at the 12th Aual Muslim Congress in Dearbo, Michigan, on Saturday, August 6, 2016. It is a blessing, a privilege, and an honor to speak at the 2016 Muslim Congress on a subject that impacts us all: Islamophobia, the dislike of Islam and Muslims; the prejudice against Islam and Muslims; and the fear and hatred against Islam and Muslims. I wish I could tell you that everyone loved us. Unfortunately, a hell of lot of people hate us. Although we have hit rock bottom and our popularity rating is the pits, we should not despair. We should view this as an opportunity and challenge as well as a test and a trial. When you are down, the only way is up. We might be in the darkest ...

SHAFAQNA –The French resort of Caes has baed full-body, head-covering swimsuits from its beaches, citing security reasons — a measure some are decrying as a discriminatory anti-Muslim move that will only worsen religious tensions. The ban on so-called burkinis, at the height of the French Riviera’s vacation season, comes as France remains on edge after deadly Islamic extremist attacks on nearby Nice and on a Catholic church in northwest France. Caes Mayor David Lisnard issued an ordinance in late July forbidding beachwear that doesn’t respect “good morals and secularism.” It notes that swimwear “manifesting religious affiliation in an ostentatious way, while France and its religious sites a...

SHAFAQNA- By: Professor Mahdi GolshaniWe have already said the Qur’an is not a book of natural science but a book of guidance and enlightenment, and wherever there is reference to the natural phenomena, it is meant to guide humans through them. We also explained God has gifted man with mental faculties so through their own endeavours and God’s help they can gradually come to understand the universe as well as their own selves and in this way get nearer to the Creator of the universe.According to the following glorious verses: “…and we have revealed the book to you explaining clearly everything and as a guidance and mercy and good news for those who submit.” (16:89)“…we have not negl...

SHAFAQNA –I seek refuge in God from Satan, the Renegade. In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. All praise is due to God, the Lord of the worlds, and may He bless all the prophets and the messengers and the rightly-guided Imams of the path of guidance, especially the Seal of the Prophets and the Seal of the Successors, to whom thousands of salutations and abundant praise are due. Their love do we cherish and their enemies do we despise in the way of God. I welcome and appreciate the presence of such distinguished and leaed attendees—you who are the true believers awaiting the blessed advent of the Master of the Age (may all our souls be sacrificed for him). I honor those w...

SHAFAQNA-Iran said the United Nations (UN)’s decision to temporarily reverse the blacklisting of Saudi Arabia for killing Yemeni children amounts to a betrayal of the defenseless minors. Gholam-Ali Khoshroo, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, made the remark at a UN Security Council meeting to discuss children and armed conflict on Tuesday. Back in June, the UN blacklisted Saudi Arabia after concluding in a report that Riyadh had been responsible for 60 percent of the 785 deaths of children in the Saudi war on Yemen last year. A few days later, however, the world body aounced that Saudi Arabia would be taken off the list pending a joint review with Saudi Arabia. Khosh...

Inteally displaced children attend a class inside a cave in the rebel-controlled village of Tramla, in Idlib province, Syria March 27, 2016. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi SHAFAQNA –With just 60 days to go before the start of the new school year, hundreds of thousands of Syrian parents are faced with the stark choice of whether to feed their children or send them to school, experts said on Wednesday. Nearly 1 million Syrian refugee children are out of school in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan which host the vast majority of the nearly 5 million refugees created by Syria’s civil war. Many Syrian children are forced to work to help make ends meet, or unable to pay for transport to school, according to a rep...

SHAFAQNA –If Muslims in France don’t help the country to battle extremists and those who threaten the Republic, it will be “increasingly hard” for Paris to guarantee freedom of Islam, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. “Through its history and its geography… and through its immigration, France maintains very strong ties with Islam,” Vallswrote in a long essay in Le Joual du Dimanche, a French weekly newspaper. According to the PM, Islam is “second-largest religion” in France and many French Muslims don’t have to identify themselves “as an Arab-Muslim culture.” However, a “terrible poison” of extremism has started spreading in the country, the French PM wrote. “Slowly, insidiously, aga...

SHAFAQNA – In the coming weeks the Baqee Organization will circulate a petition calling on the public to support its conservation efforts. Faced with a veritable cultural, historical, and religious genocide, the Baqee Organization said it was left with no other choice but to demand that the United Nations shoulder, and enact its responsibility of care. Beyond the disappearing of the world Islamic heritage, beyond the oppression of Muslim communities to the radicalism of Wahhabism, it is History which is being redacted, it is all religious communities which stand being targeted. A Muslim organization, the Baqee Org. ambitions to stand and speak for all – beyond faith, ethnicity and politica...

SHAFAQNA –As I write these lines much of the world media community is still attempting to work its way through the maze of information, misinformation and potential geopolitical repercussions Turkey’s attempted, and failed coup will likely bring in its wake. As bloggers, political analysts and various pundits have ferociously attempted to rationalize, label, and let’s say it sanitize Turkish President Erdogan’s retu to power, I fear we stand all collectively clueless … at least when it comes to those hands which in the shadow orchestrated Turkey’s change in leadership. How many of us can say they truly saw it coming? I’m not discussing here whether or not the military coup was justified, or...

In this photo taken Nov. 21, 2014, Sheik Isa Qassim, Bahrain's top Shiite Muslim cleric, speaks during midday prayers Friday, in the village of Diraz, Bahrain. Bahrainx92s leading Shiite opposition group says security forces have raided the home of the countryx92s most prominent Shiite cleric. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali) Shafaqna –UK Sui and Shia leaders issued ajoint statement on targeting of Ayatullah Shaykh Isa al-Qasim and denouncedthe revocation of the citizenship of opponents and curtailing of religious freedoms asrepressive and authoritarian, which will exacerbate sectarian tensions. According to Shafaqna the statement reads: starting today, the high criminal court in the Kingdom of Bahra...