News

The Islamic state is a controversial issue in the West, as recent news confirms. Last October, an imam was killed and six men arrested by the FBI in Detroit for allegedly conspiring to establish an Islamic state in the United States. In the United Kingdom, government officials worry that extremist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir have infiltrated Muslim schools to propagate their vision of an Islamic state. Public opinion in the West reflects the fear that radical Muslims are trying to impose their values on the rest of the world. But the nebulous term "Islamic state" is not merely a concern for the anxious Western world, it is actually a point of discord and contention within the Muslim world itself.

Balochistan does not have a vibrant middle class nor does it have an active civil society. The media are too restricted and operate unprofessionally with the intention not to offend the government and the tribal chiefs. Perhaps it is this reason that Balochistan is absolutely quite even after the barbaric killing of four women in different incidents in a period of barely one week. Women have been killed brutally by their own close family members in Balochistan’s districts located on the Sindh border on suspicion of having illicit relations with other men. The wired justification given for these reprehensible murders is the “family honor” that is presumably compromised by the “immoral girls”.

For many years, photojournalism in Palestine was the exclusive domain of men. Women were largely restricted to only taking pictures of weddings and social events. Recently, Palestinian women have burst on the photojournalist scene challenging these social norms, while receiving accolades for the work abroad. Although the Palestinian Territories are filled with stories that are worth documenting through the lens of a camera no matter who carries it, the number of female photojournalists is still relatively low in comparison with male photojournalists.

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks. The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.