COP30 in Brazil’s Belém concluded with a diluted agreement, which failed to address fossil fuel phase-out or deforestation, amid US federal absence, China’s leadership, and calls for equitable transitions outside UN consensus
The rise of Zohran Mamdani, who is set to become New York’s first Muslim and African mayor of South Asian descent, and his political vision is rooted in his father and Columbia University academic Mahmood Mamdani’s civil rights activism and the idea of linked struggles for freedom
Suharto’s elevation as a national hero opened the wounds of the mass killings, repression, corruption, and militarisation, which were never fully confronted or healed, under his over three-decade dictatorship. It becomes more fraught as Prabowo strengthens the military’s role, raising fears that Indonesia may be drifting back. Accountability or amnesia will determine whether Indonesia’s democracy endures or creeping authoritarianism continues
Despite evidence that polygamy is marginal, declining, and not specific to a religious group, it has been weaponised against Muslims to fuel Islamophobia, even as the Quran, the primary source of Islamic law, backs monogamy as the preferred model of marriage, underlining how polygamy can never be fair and just
Israeli airstrike in Qatar shattered assumptions of immunity and marked the first direct violation of the sovereignty of a Gulf Arab nation, raising questions over the durability of the Abraham Accords or normalization of ties between Arab states and Israel, and deepening fears of escalation
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel cites Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek, biblical Israel’s rival nation, which has long been used to justify killing Palestinians
European notions of “inferior races” underpinned genocidal practices—from Tasmania’s colonial massacre to the eugenic theories that laid the groundwork for the Holocaust, with Gaza reflecting longstanding colonial templates: the dehumanization, the framing of civilian lives as disposable, and the use of authoritarian control not an anomaly, but a continuation of historical patterns of racialized violence
China is reclaiming its over two millennia-long influence as a global center of trade, culture, and power after a period of decline under colonialism, thanks to economic growth, diplomacy, and strategic partnerships, positioning itself as a key shaper of the emerging world order
Centenarian Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister who returned to politics at 92 after retiring in 2003, transformed his country over his 22-year rule through pragmatic policies that spurred economic growth and development, transforming a commodity-based economy into a high-tech industrial hub
Reagan and economist Arthur Laffer used Ibn Khaldun’s ideas to build modern conservative tax policy, although the Islamic roots of supply-side economics and the influence of the Islamic Golden Age remains largely forgotten
