In The News

Islamic Finance Confronts Pandemic: Global Finance

Chloe Domat May 24, 2020
The Islamic finance industry, operating in about 80 nations, has a large market share in microfinance, small enterprises and retail lending. The Covid-19 pandemic will hit the industry hard with governments closing stores and ordering social-distancing, along with many borrowers seeking forbearance, restructuring or new loans. Governments hurried to assist corporations, with less support for low-...

Terrorists Storm Hospital: Afghanistan Times

Faizi Mansour May 13, 2020
May 12 was a particularly brutal day in Afghanistan. “Terrorists stormed a maternity hospital in west of Kabul on Tuesday morning, killing at least 16 people including four women and children and injured 16 others, in a gun battle with security forces that lasted for hours,” reports Afghanistan Times. Also, “More than 24 others were killed in a suicide bombing at a funeral in eastern Nangarhar.”...

Hate Goes Viral in India: Diplomat

Siddharthya Roy May 5, 2020
Questions emerge over India’s Covid-19 response with displaced migrant workers, food shortages and low testing rates. Analysts also continue to criticize the Indian government’s abrupt lockdown imposed with four hours’ notice. “Mandating social distancing in a country where cities have high population densities, and also announcing a complete shutdown of transportation necessary for people to...

Legalizing Abortion in Latin America: WSJ

Juan Forero March 6, 2020
After a lawyer filed suit to legalize abortion, the Constitutional Court of Colombia accepted the case to examine the issue – a breakthrough for Latin America where abortion is tightly restricted. While a few small countries including Uruguay, Cuba, and Guyana allow elective abortions, Colombia is the first regional power to consider legalizing abortion. Currently, the procedure is legal for...

Danger for India’s Foreign Policy: Diplomat

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan March 6, 2020
Corporate and political leaders tend to avoid partnerships that present human rights problems. “Issues such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and India’s actions in Kashmir are beginning to affect India’s relations with its neighbors, major Islamic countries such as Iran and Indonesia, and strategic partners such as the United States,” explains Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan for the Diplomat....

New Delhi Riots: Reuters

Devjyot Ghoshal and Manoj Kumar February 27, 2020
For more than two months, protesters in India have objected to the Citizenship Amendment Act that opens a path to citizenship for non-Muslims in three neighboring countries. Riots broke out and turned violent in New Delhi, disrupting the capital and contributing to 27 deaths and hundreds of injuries. “The Citizenship Amendment Act has sparked accusations that Modi and his BJP are undermining...

Liberation of Auschwitz 75 Years Later: ABC

Esther Castillejo, Almin Karamehmedovic and Enjoli Francis January 29, 2020
Germany opened the Auschwitz concentration camp in April 1940, first as a detention center for Polish political prisoners and then as a forced labor and death camp for prisoners deemed hostile to Germany or racially inferior, by far mostly people of Jewish descent. About 1.3 million people died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the largest of Nazi camps, with gas chambers used for systematic...