[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating about Islam and reflects a wide variety of opinions and approaches. It does not reflect the views of the Critical Currents in Islam page or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week`s roundup to cci@jadaliyya.com by Saturday night of every week.]

Muslim-American Congresswomen Prompt Saudi Alarm

Saudi Arabia has labeled Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Muslim Democratic Socialist congresswomen who have pledged to oppose US arms sales to any country that does not support equality and justice, part of a Muslim Brotherhood-led Islamist plot which threatens the kingdom’s strategic partnership with the US.
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How an old, far-right meme about Muslim ‘prayer rugs’ at the border became a Trump tweet

Despite the Department of State reports that there is “no credible evidence of terrorists entering the US at the southern border,” President Trump has used an unsubstantiated claim by a New Mexico rancher to assert a connection between terrorism, Islam, and border security.
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Philippines' Muslim region votes on new autonomy law

Nearly three million Filipinos from the country’s Muslim-majority southern region are set to decide on a new law which would place them under a substantially more autonomous regional government.
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Why Trump’s fearmongering about Muslims at the border misses the mark

Responding to the President’s tweet about prayer rugs at the border, Randa Tawil wants to remind him that the Muslims who are in that region of the US have been there since the 19th century.
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4 charged in plot to attack Muslim community named Islamberg

Three men and a high school student were charged with plotting to attack the rural upstate New York Muslim community of Islamberg with explosives, authorities said Tuesday.
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Chinese Islamophobia was made in the West

China is using western counter-terror strategies targeting Muslims as justification for its Uighur concentration camps.
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Indian police arrest 61 Rohingya Muslims this week

Police in northeastern India have arrested 61 Rohingya Muslims this week for illegal entry, amid reports that more than 1,300 have recently crossed the border from India into Bangladesh.
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Najaf Shiites launch solidarity initiative with Sunni areas

Clerics and other religious figures from Najaf’s Hawza Illmiya, a prominent Shiite seminary, have launched the Dialogue for Social Cohesion in Iraq, a community cooperation initiative reaching out to western and northern Sunni governorates recently liberated from the Islamic State group.
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A warning from India for European liberals on how to manage relations with Muslim minorities

Oxford Professor Joerg Friedrichs points to India’s recent departure from a history of relative interfaith harmony as a warning to European liberals to balance the care for majorities and minorities rather than drawing lines of us and them.
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Meet Iran’s next, non-turbaned hardliner-in-chief

Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, a graduate of Qom Seminary, is an increasingly popular public figure who uses his platform to attack the atmosphere at his alma mater as “not sufficiently revolutionary”.
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Voters Are Deciding Extent of Muslim Autonomy in the Philippines

More than 50 years of Muslim rebel violence, which has killed 121,000 and attracted the terrorist group Islamic State, came down to the ballot box this week. Voters in two cities and three other regions of the southern island Mindanao combined on Monday to ratify a law that creates the country’s strongest ever semi-autonomous Muslim region.
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Conflict erupts over properties surrounding Samarra shrine

Property owners around the Holy Shrine of Askarian Imams in Samarra, Iraq, are being pressured to sell their land below market value, according to Salahuddin Provincial Council Chairman Ahmad al-Krayem.
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‘More merciful than Yahweh’: Jack Miles on God in the Quran

Religion News Service’s senior editor Yonat Shimron reviews Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and academic Jack Miles’  latest book God in the Qur’an.
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Muslim enclave that was foiled attack target urges justice

The leadership of The Muslims of America, who run Islamberg and other communities around the country, has demanded an end to what they sees as decades of misunderstanding and Islamophobia against the community.
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Preoccupied Western powers fall silent on human rights: rights group

Global powers have become so diverted by populism and domestic discontent that they lack the capacity or inclination to defend human rights or even investigate suspected war crimes, global pressure group Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
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Threatened with an end to Shariah divorce, Egypt’s imams work to save marriages

In response to a rising divorce rate in Egypt, Muslim religious leaders in Egypt established a ‘reunification unit’ to bring couples together with counselors in hopes of reconciliation.
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As teachers get paid, learning returns to bombed-out Yemen school

Its books have been looted and walls were blown out, but a school in war-torn southern Yemen is hopeful that the resumption of regular salary payments can keep teachers and children in classrooms.
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How Iran has moved to defrock ‘Instagram cleric’

Popular Iranian “Instagram cleric” Seyed Hasan Aghamirii, was defrocked by the Special Court of Clergy and sentenced to two years in prison for “insulting the sacred through ridicule; disturbing public opinion, resulting in insecurity in the beliefs of the people; and conducting acts and behavior contrary to that of a cleric.”
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Muslim groups condemn detention of Iranian broadcaster

Civil and human rights organizations, including several Muslim civil rights groups, have protested the detention of Marzieh Hashemi, an American-born broadcaster for Iran’s state-run English-language Press TV; Ms Hashemi has been detained as a material witness in an unspecified case.
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With Fatwas and Blasphemy Claims, Cleric Emerges as a Force in Indonesia

Vice Presidential candidate Ma’ruf Amin, a Muslim cleric who aided the prosecution of a prominent Christian for blasphemy, is on track to win the upcoming election with running mate Joko Widodo.
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Israel’s president hails interfaith dialogue

President Reuven Rivlin chaired a conference in France between rabbis and imams this week, and has become the one voice in Israeli’s government who is standing firm for religious coexistence.
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Minnesota mosque attack: 'White Rabbits' militiamen plead guilty

Two members of a militia group known as the White Rabbits have admitted bombing a mosque in Minnesota in 2017.
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'Landslide vote' for wider Muslim self-rule in Philippines' south

Voters have decisively approved an expanded Muslim-led region in the Philippines’ south, which is hoped will bring a measure of peace after decades of fighting has killed thousands and mired the area in poverty.
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Egypt launches international academy for preachers, imams

The Egyptian Ministry of Endowments has opened a new academy for training religious leaders in hopes of renewing and elevating discourse and eliminating extremism.
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Why Saudi Arabia hates Muslim women in the US Congress

It is no surprise to Professor Hamid Dabashi that the Saudi propaganda machine has come after US House Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
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