Monday briefing: How the new phase of confrontation at al-Aqsa signals a challenge to the status quo
In today’s newsletter: Jerusalem’s most volatile site has again become a flashpoint, with Arab states and former Israeli officials sounding the alarm over Benjamin Netanyahu’s complicity
Good morning. In late July, Itamar Ben-Gvir, West Bank settler and far-right extremist minister of security in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, joined a group of more than 2,000 Jewish extremists to storm al-Aqsa mosque compound, Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. The far-right group has been doing this for years. Ben-Gvir has made series of visits to the site over the last three years, eroding norms and inflaming tensions. Jordanian officials have recently warned that it could be at risk of an “imminent” Israeli takeover.
With national elections scheduled in October, and many eyes still firmly on Gaza (this weekend, Netanyahu rejected a US-backed 15 point plan for peace), the Israeli government appears to be racing to expand Israeli settlements and accelerate ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem before its mandate expires.
UK politics | Sadiq Khan has called on the government to commit to revamped climate action and to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas, as the UK endures a summer of drought, wildfires and heatwaves.
US politics | The US Senate voted to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general in a win for Donald Trump, who will now have his one-time personal attorney sitting atop the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.
US-Israel war on Iran | Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, as a deal to open the strategic waterway remained out of reach on Saturday.
Russia-Ukraine | Up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers will be deployed in Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. On Saturday, Turkey called for a “moratorium” on attacks by Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea after a series of strikes on civilian ships there
World news | The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai on Sunday and met by a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat and mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities.
Wednesday | A partial solar eclipse will be visible across the whole of the UK, with the south-west of England getting the best of British views. Parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain will experience a total eclipse.
Thursday | Clacton-on-sea residents will vote in the byelection Nigel Farage triggered last month, with the Reform leader taking on 33 mostly novelty candidates. Results are expected early Friday.
Thursday | The Office for National Statistics will publish UK GDP figures for the second quarter of 2026.
Continue reading...Rod Liddle: the hater and his luvvies
Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan
Country convenes emergency meeting of ministers from Arab and Islamic world, fearing such a move could ‘trigger a religious conflict’
Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”.
The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site.
Continue reading...‘It’s not about the Qur’an, it’s about the money’: how boys of five are made to beg on Senegal’s streets
A practice of sending children away to study at religious schools is being used as a cover for trafficking, say human rights groups
In a bare, gloomy room on the beachfront at Saint-Louis, in the north-west of Senegal, dozens of young boys sit on a concrete floor chanting verses from the Qur’an, surrounded by fishing boats and piles of rubbish. It is early in the morning but the children have already been up for hours, not to study but to walk the streets begging for food and money.
Every day, these talibés, or students of the Qur’an, join thousands of other boys, some as young as five, on the streets of the city in search of a piece of baguette, a handful of rice or a few coins. They beg not just to fill their own stomachs but also the pockets of their Qur’anic teachers, or marabouts.
Talibés prepare to study the Qur’an under a marabout, or religious teacher, at a daara, or Qur’anic school, in Saint-Louis
Continue reading...The BBC’s rain mirages
Pauline Hanson’s no ‘good Muslims’ comment don’t breach hate speech laws, Australian federal police finds
One Nation leader’s ‘how can you tell me there are good Muslims?’ remarks were the subject of complaints, but police say the matter has now been finalised
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The Australian federal police has determined One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s comments about Muslim Australians “do not meet the threshold” of breaching hate laws.
The AFP said it received several complaints about Hanson’s remarks to Sky News on 16 February.
Continue reading...Germany's leaders say the Berlin Pride attack targeted 'all of us'. What utter hypocrisy | Fatma Aydemir
The queer community has lost resources and protection due to decisions made by the people now mouthing solidarity in public
It feels like a well-rehearsed script. First come the flowers, then the pious statements. One after another, mainstream German politicians have lined up to claim that the attack on Berlin Pride last weekend was an attack on “all of us”, “our values” and “our society”.
Except it was not. This atrocity in which a van was rammed into the crowd was, first and foremost, an attack on queer people. A vulnerable community that has been fighting for its rights for many decades; that, in recent years and all over the world, has increasingly been targeted by conservative forces.
Continue reading...Former Labor senator Nova Peris accused of ‘amplifying’ anti-Muslim social media posts
Olympian and Labor Friends of Israel patron shared posts about Palestinians that were ‘dehumanising’, Muslim advocacy group alleges
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Former Labor senator Nova Peris has been accused of amplifying anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian content by sharing posts that claim Gaza is full of “savages” and “fucking monsters”.
The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (Aman) has identified dozens of what it describes as dehumanising posts seen on Peris’s verified X account between April 2024 and March 2026.
Continue reading...UK’s largest Muslim event goes ahead with added security as hate crime rises
Jalsa Salana in Hampshire has had enhanced support from police, emergency services and local authorities
Security has been increased by several hundred additional staff at the UK’s largest Muslim convention, Jalsa Salana, alongside enhanced coordination with police, emergency services and local authorities, against a backdrop of growing anti-Muslim sentiment.
Last month, another big Islamic gathering was forced to close early after 12 people were arrested, including three on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, over a suspected far-right threat.
Continue reading...Why has Britain’s oldest political magazine become such a rabid cheerleader for Islamophobia? | Nesrine Malik
A report on the Spectator’s coverage of Muslims makes for grim reading. Conservatism is now focused on this minority to the exclusion of everything else
I start this column already resigned to the tune out, to the glaze over, the click away. This is not to say that I do not have faith in you, dear reader, to keep reading and caring. But I am aware, and this is central to the problem, that it is now normal, when it comes to a certain minority in this country, to speak of them as if they were some sort of plague. Islamophobia has become so common as to be mundane in large parts of the British media. Foremost among the offenders is Britain’s oldest political magazine: the Spectator.
A large and comprehensive report from the Centre for Media Monitoring reviewed 3,733 articles published in the Spectator relating to Islam or Muslims. Released last week, it criticised the publication for “a sustained and systemic pattern of biased coverage of Muslims and Islam”, according to the CMM, “with more than half of all relevant articles rated as biased over an eight-year period”. It is grim, grim reading.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
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Continue reading...What price Farage’s security?
The Taliban’s war on education: ‘Nobody talks about what is happening to the boys’
Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists retook Afghanistan, students describe male pupils being beaten for minor rule breaches and inexperienced teachers struggling to deliver lessons
Before he leaves for Kabul University each morning, Hashmat* checks his face for the beard he has been ordered to grow. Male students are required to grow their facial hair and wear traditional Afghan clothes and those who fall short are punished. Hashmat says he recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers.
“They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins,” he says.
Continue reading...As a Muslim cricketer, at times I felt like I didn’t belong. I yearn for an Australia where all that matters is how you play | Usman Khawaja
Whenever I wore the baggy green, I was reminded of what that cap represented – a team that was stronger because each player brought something different
A cricket scorecard is pretty straightforward.
It shows you how many runs you scored, how long you played and whether your team won or lost. Cricket has always been appealing to me because of that honesty. The numbers don’t care about your appearance, where you were born or what you believe.
Continue reading...Austrian court rules ski resort hotel’s burkini ban is discriminatory
Hotel did not allow two Muslim women to wear full-body bathing suit, which has become bugbear of European far right
An Austrian court has found an alpine hotel’s ban on burkinis discriminatory, a politically explosive ruling in a country where the far right is on the rise.
The full-body bathing suit worn by some Muslim women has become a bugbear of the European far right, which has campaigned to restrict Muslim dress in public spaces.
Continue reading...Two in five Britons think Muslims cannot integrate in UK, poll finds
Government’s former extremism adviser sounds alarm as idea that diversity is harmful becomes ‘mainstream view’
Two in five Britons believe Muslims cannot integrate into British society and more than half believe the country’s national identity is disappearing due to “diversity”, a report authored by a former government adviser on extremism has found.
Sara Khan, who stood down in 2024 as the UK’s first counter-extremism commissioner, said such views contrasted sharply with accompanying findings that showed 85% of Muslims “favour integration”.
Continue reading...Review: Citizen Vigilante
Two weeks, two reports
Young Indonesian couple publicly caned after kissing on TikTok
Unmarried man and woman whipped 21 times each because they had violated province’s version of Islamic law
A young couple in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province have been publicly caned after a Sharia court convicted them of violating Islamic law by kissing during a TikTok livestream.
The court ordered the couple, a 22-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, to be whipped with a rattan cane 21 times each for kissing without being married. At least 100 people witnessed the caning, carried out by a group of people wearing robes and hoods on a stage in Bustanussalatin City Park in Banda Aceh.
Continue reading...Josh Burns says partner Georgie Purcell faces antisemitic abuse because he is Jewish, commission hears
The royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion hears how witnesses are subjected to hate speech amplified by misogyny
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Vile, threatening abuse is being levelled at witnesses to the antisemitism royal commission, the inquiry has heard, while a Labor MP has said attacks on his partner were heightened because they were stacked with misogyny.
Meanwhile, data analysis has shown how quickly factual reports are transformed into conspiracy theories online, and that while there was a spike in antisemitism after the Bondi terror attack, there was a “huge spike” in anti-Muslim hate.
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