I am proud to announce the first release of Nurani, Meedan’s platform for cross-language scriptural discussion for Muslim and Christian scholars managed by the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme at the University of Cambridge, a programme of the Faculty of Divinity.

The long term goal is a federated system of discussion fora (Nurani, ScripturalReasoning.org and others run by new partners) drawing upon a common textual resource (the library).  The next phase in this vision is to be funded over 18 months by a UK Research Council Digital Economy Grant with two new developer positions to be hired at Cambridge with project management, design and strategy provided by Meedan.

Earlier this year, I was invited to sit in on a theological gathering at Cambridge University.  Over three intense days, I watched scholars from as far afield as Asia, North America, the Middle East and Russia pour over passages of scripture in small mixed faith groups.  Although the academic surroundings were familiar to me, I was to be exposed to a form of shared study that I had never witnessed before.

As the sole London-based member of Meedan’s far flung team (we have developers in Damascus, Amman, San Francisco and Portland, not to mention our team of editors and translators across the Middle East), I was glad to have some company last week when some of my colleagues dropped in for a visit.

The occasion was a two-day gathering at the University of Cambridge with the academic partners behind our inter-faith project.

On Wednesday 8 September, with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks still three days away, Kabul police went on high alert for violent protests in the Afghan capital. The move was triggered not by the repercussions of a local conflict, but the actions of a little-known American church pastor thousands of miles away in Florida who was planning to burn copies of the Qur’an in a protest against what he called ‘radical Islam’.
The crisis, which elicited stark warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the top U.S. …

A BBC Open University series is providing a UK audience with a rare view of life inside Syria’s schools.

The Syrian Schools series gives UK viewers an unprecedented opportunity to learn what ‘Syrians are really like and what hopes and aspirations they have’, according to the series’ associate producer Itab Azzam.

The first hour-long episode, broadcast last night on BBC 4 and available on the BBC iPlayer, shows students debating with teachers about the importance of the hijab, examines the role of the ruling Ba’ath party in schools and considers the taboo topic of Iraqis Christians living in Damascus.

The girl at the center of a child marriage dispute in Saudi Arabia has unexpectedly withdrawn her petition for divorce.

The 12-year-old told the court in Buraidah, in Al-Qasim province, that her marriage to an 80-year-old man had her agreement, the news website Okaz reported.

“I agree to the marriage. I have no objection. This is in filial respect to my father and obedience to his wish,” she said despite earlier objections from her mother.

Switzerland’s controversial referendum decision to ban the construction of new minarets for Swiss mosques has caused varying degrees of concern in the Arab world, and attracted a wide ranging debate about the reasons behind the decision.

Independent online daily Nawwar reports that amongst observers, whether Swiss, Arab, or Muslims of any ethnicity “understanding the nature and significance of this initiative differs from one person to the next, some see it as a storm in a teacup, while others see it as flagrant evidence of the “spirit of religious war” persisting in the subconscious of many people in the West.”

The discovery of Ardi, the oldest hominid skeleton ever found, was big news for the science community around the world.

But in the Middle East, the news triggered a different order of debate.

‘A research team revealed Thursday that the discovery of “Ardi” proves humans did not evolve from chimpanzee-like ancestors,’ reported Al Jazeera on its Arabic language website under the headline ‘Ardi rebuts Darwin’s theory’.

One of Britain’s leading right wing newspapers, The Daily Mail, appears to have lost touch with its readers over its criticism of the fascist Islamophobic British National Party and its leader Nick Griffin.

In recent days, Mail readers have overwhelming voiced support for Griffin and the BNP on the paper’s website, despite trenchant attacks on the party by the outlet’s leading commentators.

The clash comes on the back of Griffin’s first ever appearance on the BBC’s flagship political debate programme, Question Time, on Thursday night in which the extremist defended his description of Islam as ‘vile and wicked’, repeated his view that homosexuals were ‘creepy’, and failed to refute that he had a record Holocaust denial.

A Muslim blogger is creating waves for a book that tells her story of finding love.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s ‘memoir of growing up as a Muslim woman’ tells of her quest to find the right man through the traditional route of arranged marriage.

With an extract published in The Daily Mail and an interview in The Guardian, Janmohamed has seen her book Love in a Headscarf shoot to a five star rating on Amazon, suggesting it has hit a chord with readers.

“I was really overwhelmed by how connected people felt to the story and how it had humanised what it meant to be a Muslim woman,” Janmohamed said. “That for me was really important.”