A professor at Egypt’s Islamic Al-Azhar university on Monday retracted a controversial religious edict which states that a woman can only be left alone with a strange man if she breastfeeds him.
Ezzat Attia, president of the university’s Hadith department which studies traditions based on the Prophet Mohammed’s words and deeds, withdrew his fatwa and apologised […]

Wednesday April 24th. 8th honor crime victim. Amman-Zarqa highway. Brother kills 30-year-old sister because she had been missing from the family home for 1 week. 5 bullets.
Truck driver on his way to Aqaba sees a relative of his; a 14 year old boy. Stops and tells him he’ll drive him home. Takes him to a […]

A reader of the Black Iris shifted my attention towards an article in yesterday’s Al-Ghad about a Palestinian in east Gaza whose Internet cafe was targeted recently by an extremist group calling itself the “swords of justice” or “swords of righteousness”, or whatever latest creative names these goons have come up with. The cafe is […]

I’m always interested in knowing how criminal courts calculate time based sentences, especially when there’s usually a year and month involved. Remember the man a few days back who molested his 2 daughters 1,085 times? The same man who received the 9 years and 8 months jail sentence? Well recently another man was sentenced for […]

Man handed prison term for molesting his daughters By Rana Husseini

AMMAN — The Criminal Court has sentenced a 50-year-old Arab national to nine years and eight months in prison after convicting him of molesting his two daughters for the past 14 years.
The defendant, who was arrested in January 2006, was convicted of molesting his […]

Father charged with premeditated murder of his daughter By Rana Husseini
AMMAN — The criminal prosecutor on Monday charged a 68-year-old father with the premeditated murder of his daughter for reasons the suspect claimed were related to family honour, official sources said.
The 26-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, was shot six times […]

…but in a much different way…
Father serves 3 months for son’s murder
By Rana Husseini
AMMAN — A 52-year-old man walked free from the Criminal Court this week after receiving a reduced sentence for murdering his son in August 2005.
Z. K. was first sentenced to six months for shooting and killing his son at his […]

What do you think?
(March 5, 2007) RIYADH - A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped, and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes - for meeting a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported Monday.
In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, the 19-year-old said she was blackmailed […]

Almost two years ago forced marriages were banned in Saudi Arabia under the discovery that it was in fact un-Islamic. Who knew eh? Some argued at the time that this wasn’t the reason and instead it was an attempt to curtail the 50% divorce rate.
I think it was neither.
Simply because while forced marriages are […]

Nearly 10 days ago before the other shoe fell and a unity government was in the works, an interesting event occurred that flew under my radar; probably because it was a different kind of Palestinian “infighting”. In a meeting between top Fatah members at the government headquarters in Ramallah, Mr. Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the […]

I admit it, there are too many portraits, pictures and monuments. I don’t find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it because of their mentality.
With Saddam’s execution late last month there is one political event that many people may have overlooked that took place only a few days earlier on December 21st, 2006. […]

Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourself for some irony: Trent Lott is the Senate’s new ‘minority whip’. Get it?
Since bloggers were in part responsible for his downfall a few years back here’s what some have to say. In other news worth watching: CNN’s Glen Beck interviews the first Muslim Congressman and asks him the essential question […]

I always found one western view particularly interesting in this post 911 world of ours, and that is the idea that if and when a Muslim ever does something nutty all 1.5 billion are expected to condemn and protest. If this doesn’t happen then Muslims forfeit the right to complain about anything happening to them. […]

“We were not in Iraq when they killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001.”
(Cheers, applause.)
George W. Bush speaking on Monday afternoon, October 30th 2006, at a rally held at Georgia Southern University

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Now I am a typical male who knows just about nothing when it comes to fashion, specifically what women choose to wear. However I have to admit that when the fashion industry starts producing and promoting clothes for women with 23½-inch waists, it’s a cause for concern, no? Is anorexia a fad now? I thought […]

This is one crazy story about the family of Iraqis that died recently in Amman under mysterious circumstances. The following is what happened…
Amman - Jordanian security authorities have established that a love affair between a Jordanian and an Iraqi woman prompted the man to set his lover’s house ablaze at dawn on Wednesday, killing her […]