Mumbai: Noted Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer passed away on Tuesday in Mumbai after a prolonged illness. Engineer, 73, died early morning at his home in suburban Santa Cruz, family sources said.
He is survived by a son and a daughter. Born in 1940, he did BSc in civil engineering from Vikram University. From 1980, he edited a journal 'The Islamic Perspective' and during the 1980s he published a string of books on Islam and communal violence in India, the latter based on his field investigations in post-independence India.
In 1987, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the USA International Student Assembly and the USA Indian Student Assembly. In 1990, he received the Dalmia Award for communal harmony and was the recipient of three honorary doctorate degrees.
The destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 provided the impetus for the foundation by Engineer in 1993 of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), of which he was the Chairman and which was the organisational focus of his work since then. He published 52 books, many papers and articles, including those for scholarly journals....
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Ahmedabad: The prime accused in the Ahmedabad serial bomb blasts case of 2008, Mohammad Shahid Nagori, was remanded in nine days police custody by a local court on Sunday. Nagori, a member of Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and an alleged Indian Mujahedeen (IM) operative, was arrested by Madhya Pradesh police on May 3, 2013 from Ujjain and handed over to the Gujarat police team lead by DCP Crime...
02:27 AM, May 06, 2013
New Delhi: Contract marriages are on the rise in Hyderabad, claimed women's rights groups as a teenager blew the lid off India's underground culture of Islamic sex tourism involving men who paid for 'wives' for four weeks, according to a report in the daily 'Telegraph'. The paper claimed that minor escaped after her parents pressurised her to consummate a forced marriage to a middle aged Sudanese man who had paid...
03:01 PM, Apr 23, 2013
Baga: Fighting between Nigeria's military and Islamic extremists killed at least 185 people in a fishing community in the nation's far northeast, officials said on Sunday, an attack that saw insurgents fire rocket-propelled grenades and soldiers spray machine-gun fire into neighborhoods filled with civilians. The fighting in Baga began on Friday and lasted for hours, sending people fleeing into the arid scrublands surrounding the community on Lake Chad. By Sunday,...
06:40 AM, Apr 22, 2013
Mumbai Police has kicked up a controversy following its circular which says the women's wing of an Islamic organisation is "brainwashing and training girls for Jihad". The outfit has threatened legal action if no apology is tendered by the police. ...
07:44 PM, Apr 01, 2013
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday pledged stern action against people found guilty of defaming Islam using the internet as right-wing Islamic parties threatened to wage an intensified street campaign against "atheist bloggers". "You (Islamic parties) do not need to go for any movement. As a Muslim, I have the responsibility to take action," Hasina said at a party meeting of her ruling Awami League, this evening. ...
02:30 AM, Apr 01, 2013
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were juveniles aged under 18, the British-based rights group Amnesty International said. ...
02:47 AM, Mar 05, 2013
Bangladesh war crimes tribunal on Thursday handed down death penalty to a top leader of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami for "crimes against humanity" during the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, triggering fierce clashes across the country that left at least 35 people dead. 73-year-old Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of eight counts out of 20 involving rape, mass killings and...
11:55 PM, Feb 28, 2013
Thousands of people demonstrated in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka to demand a death sentence for an Islamic party leader accused of committing atrocities during the country's 1971 Liberation war. More than 5,000 people rallied on Wednesday after a special tribunal said it would deliver its verdict against Delwar Hossain Sayedee on Thursday. ...
10:59 PM, Feb 27, 2013
Strongly rejecting Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's suggestion of allowing an OIC fact- finding mission to Jammu and Kashmir to assess rights situation there, India today said the grouping has no "locus standi" on such matters and termed suggestions to this effect by Pakistan Foreign Minister as "propagandist". ...
02:33 PM, Feb 08, 2013
A millionaire Muslim businessman in Britain has been ordered to remove an Islamic message from the side of his luxury house as council officials say it is like advertising, a British daily reported on Tuesday. ...
12:40 AM, Jan 30, 2013
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04:57 PM, Jan 07, 2013
A Muslim couple have sued a school in Britain after it banned students from wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf or hijab, a media report said on Thursday. ...
03:43 AM, Jan 04, 2013
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08:05 AM, Oct 07, 2012
Paris: In its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum has a new wing dedicated to Islamic art, a nearly 100 million ($130 million) project that comes at a tense time between the West and the Muslim world. Louvre curators tout their new Islamic Art department, which took 11 years to build and opens to the public on Saturday, as a way to help bridge cultural divides. They say...
03:16 PM, Sep 27, 2012
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12:29 PM, Sep 26, 2012
On Friday, a group of about 500 people vandalised the US consulate building and burned effigies of President Barack Obama, over a US movie that reportedly has anti-Islamic overtones. ...
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Violence spreads to Sana'a Yemen and intensified in Cairo as angry mobs storm the US embassies agitating against an anti Islam movie. ...
08:01 PM, Sep 13, 2012
