Iran continues to arrest Sufi mystics. The victims of state suppression represent the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi order, the main body of traditional metaphysical Muslims in the country. On April 20, Abdolghafour Ghalandari Nejad, a webmaster for the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi site Majzooban Noor (The Alluring Light), was detained in the south Iranian port city...

A century ago, on Nov. 28, 1912, the people of Albania proclaimed their freedom from the Ottoman Empire. The declaration of Albanian independence, and adoption of the ancient Albanian banner, with a black double-headed eagle on a red field, were announced in the eastern Adriatic port of Vlora.
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In the early evening of Tuesday, Oct. 16, while most of the rest of the country focused on the second presidential debate, the family of the murdered U.S. ambassador to Libya, John Christopher Stevens, sponsored a "celebration of life" in his name. The memorial took place in the rotunda of...

Sunday, Aug. 19, was a day of celebration for millions of Muslims across the globe. The fasting month of Ramadan ended with the holiday of Eid Ul-Fitr (the festival of fast-breaking), at the beginning of the succeeding Islamic lunar month of Shawwal. In some countries, Eid Ul-Fitr commenced at sunset...

In Iraq, 60 percent of the population follows Shiite Islam. Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Al-Sistani, born in Iran in 1930, is the supreme Shiite religious authority or marja for Iraq. Iraqi and Iranian Shiites represent contrasting cultural legacies -- Arabic in Iraq and Persian in Iran -- but adherence to...

The world's leading states -- the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and China -- stand at an impasse in dealing with Iran and its nuclear potential. Iran has been a major contributor to the survival of the regime of Bashar Al-Assad and Al-Assad's unrestrained bloodshed in Syria. A full European...

Bosnia-Herzegovina and its capital, Sarajevo, once represented admirable examples of multiethnic and multifaith cooperation. But that paradigm of peaceful, mutual respect among religious believers -- and, in the aftermath of Tito's Yugoslav Communism, non-believers -- is broken, and there is little hope that it may be repaired -- now or...

With the rest of the world, during the past two weeks, I found my attention drawn to the historic city of Toulouse in France, and the assault on a Jewish religious school there. The preceding murders of French Arab and black military personnel in the region had allowed many to...

Author's note: I wrote on the similarities between Islamic Sufism and Jewish Kabbalah in the medieval era for The Huffington Post in a commentary dated Oct. 5, 2011. With the present remarks, I will bring some aspects of the topic closer to the present.

I...

Destruction of libraries and museums was one of many potent symbols of Serbian aggression against the newly-independent Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the 1992-95 war that left the country partitioned. Abundant acts of evil were perpetrated in the conflict, and witnessed by the world. They included hundreds of thousands of civilian...

Joseph Braude, who also writes for The Huffington Post, is the American scion of a distinguished Iraqi Jewish family. His mother emigrated to Israel, but the family landed in Providence, R.I., where Braude grew up. His mother then divorced, and in her company, Braude began to study Arabic language and...

Millions of Iranian and Kurdish Sufis, in Iran and Iraq as well as in the Iranian and Kurdish communities abroad, will have observed the 10th anniversary, on Nov. 18, 2011, of the death of one of the greatest spiritual musicians known to them in modern times.

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Hajj is a duty required of all Muslim believers who can afford it: one of the five pillars of Islam along with the profession of faith, prayer, payment of charity and fasting at Ramadan. Hajj is a ritual journey to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, during five...

The announcement on Oct. 27 that Saudi King Abdullah Ibn Abd Al-Aziz had appointed his half-brother, Prince Nayef, as Crown Prince and presumptive heir to the monarch has been presented by official Saudi sources and foreign media as promising a smooth transition during the social upheavals in the Middle East,...

The world's Muslim believers and the Jewish people have significant aspects common to their traditions -- notwithstanding the persistence of conflict in the Middle East. Jews and Arabs both trace their lineage to the monotheistic prophet Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic). Jews affirm their descent from Isaac, the son of Abraham...

Iran is the country in which the Muslim intellectual tradition is most identified with Sufism, the spiritual dimension of Islam -- including such exponents in poetry and philosophy as Rumi, often reputed to be the widest-read versifier in America today. But as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Sept....

As the great historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis, remarked some years ago at a lecture in Washington, D.C., Sufis, followers of the mystical way in Islam, are "peaceful but not pacifist." That is, Sufis dedicate themselves to personal and collective spiritual cultivation, and seek fruitful and mutually respectful relations with...

Devotees of Sufism, the spiritual interpretation of Islam, face problems wherever they are found. In the West, many self-styled Sufis have never become Muslim, know little of the religious background of the Sufi way, and give Sufism a reputation as simply another flavor of New-Age, "weekend" mysticism. In Muslim lands,...

When the NATO intervention in Kosovo began in 1998, it was fairly common, all over the world, to hear the Albanians in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) denounced as terrorists, jihadists and otherwise as Islamists. Given that Kosovo Albanians are 90 percent Muslim, this was probably a predictable development.

By coincidence, I was thinking about Serbia when I received word of the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the notorious leader of the Serbian extremist forces that devastated Bosnia-Hercegovina in the Yugoslav war of 1992-95.

On May 26, I was sitting in a hotel room in Nazareth, having just visited...