Author: Priya Saha

Saraswati Puja is one of the religious festivals of the Hindu community. The community is celebrating Saraswati Puja, worshiping the goddess of knowledge, music, art and culture, across the country today, Saturday (February 5), maintaining health safety guidelines.  In separate statements, President M Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina greeted the members of the Hindu community on the occasion of the Saraswati Puja. Major Hindu temples, schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions arrange the festival with traditional joy and religious fervor. In particular, the students seek blessings of goddess Saraswati in their pursuit of knowledge, art, music and culture.…

The 2022 Winter Olympics kicked off Friday in spectacular fashion as one of the final torchbearers in the opening ceremony was revealed to be Uyghur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang.For a country that has been condemned for its treatment of the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, the symbolism was impossible to miss. The lighting of the Olympic cauldron by the final torchbearer has long been a centerpiece of Olympic opening ceremonies and marks the beginning of the Games. It is considered a great honor to be the last athlete to carry the flame. This year…

The first episode of this fresh podcast by Aussie Christian women will air next Thursday, February 3. Run Like A Woman shines a light on the experiences of ordinary Australian Christian women, offering encouragement, connection and inspiration.  “I love the intimacy of a podcast. It can be taken into people’s most private places. It travels around the park as the owner of the device exercises. It is in the bathroom. The kitchen. The workspace. The garden. In bed!” enthuses Run Like A Woman’s co-host and co-producer Penny Mulvey, an accomplished radio and media professional, chair of Christian Media and Arts Australia…

On January 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a hologram of Subhas Chandra Bose at the India Gate on the occasion of the latter’s 125th birth anniversary. The hologram will remain until a statue of the leader of the Indian National Army (INA) is erected. Historian Sugata Bose, Netaji’s grandnephew and historian, said that though the announcement to have a statue of the freedom fighter at a “very prominent place in New Delhi is a belated, but a fully deserved honour”, the Modi government’s policies and beliefs are in stark contrast to Netaji’s. On January 28, 2022, The Wire published a…

Published: February 04, 2022 20:10:31 | Updated: February 04, 2022 20:12:36 Saudi Arabia has initiated a move to change its national anthem and green flag, which is emblazoned with a sword and inscribed with Islam’s creed as the birthplace of the faith. Late on Monday, the kingdom’s un-elected consultative Shura Council voted in favour of changes, state-run media reported, according to the Associated Press. The development comes as the country’s young crown prince emphasises Saudi nationality and national pride. While decisions by the council have no bearing on existing laws or structures, the vote is significant because its members are…

A little after noon on Dec. 6, Rahul Raghuvanshi was about halfway through writing his maths exam paper in St Joseph’s School in the town of Ganj Basoda in Madhya Pradesh’s Vidisha district.Suddenly, loud cries of “Jai Shri Ram!” tore through the silence. There were sounds of smashing glass. Before he could react, the 17-year-old student saw a group of angry men outside his ground-floor classroom window, attacking the panes with iron rods.Shrieking in fear, Raghuvanshi and his 13 classmates jumped from their seats and were bundled out of the room by their teacher and the external examiner who had…

Poland and Luxembourg were the only EU countries expected to send top VIPs to Beijing’s Olympics, as Russia and China use the games to forge closer ties. Polish president Andrzej Duda and Luxembourg’s grand duke Henri were the only top-level EU guests scheduled to be at Friday’s (4 February) Winter Olympics opening ceremony, the Chinese EU mission confirmed. Spokespeople for Duda and Henri did not reply to EUobserver when asked why they were going. Publicly, only a handful of EU states – the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, and the Netherlands – have confirmed they were boycotting the ceremony on…

Haats are weekly markets on the national border, attended by vendors from each side Foundation stone for Tripura’s third Border Haat was laid on Thursday at a zero point of border connecting India’s Kamalpur and Bangladesh’s Kurmaghat. Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, Bangladesh Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi and senior officials of both countries were present at the foundation stone laying programme.Two Border Haats, one at Kamalasagar in Sepahijala district and the other at Srinagar in south district are already operational in Tripura. Governments of India and Bangladesh recently approved another at Kamalpur in Tripura.Officials said preparations are also ongoing…

At the age of 17, Kamalturk Yalqun was one of several students chosen to help carry the Olympic flame ahead of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.Today, he is an activist in the United States calling for a boycott of the Winter Games over China’s treatment of his Uyghur ethnic community.“It seems to me that our sense of global citizenship and sportsmanship is not moving forward with these Olympic Games any more,” Yalqun said in a phone interview from Boston, where he now lives in exile.In the years since he took part in the Olympic torch relay and later attended…

Muhammad Salahuddin Khatib of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque Maulana Muhammad Salahuddin died of old-age complications at around 4:00pm at a hospital in Dhaka on Thursday. He was 78.  Confirming his death in press release, Islamic Foundation said, Salahuddin left behind his wife, son, three daughters and a host of well-wishers to mourn his death. He joined as the Khatib of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in 2009 and performed his duty with honesty and devotion, the release added. Salahuddin was born on November 1, 1944. Religious Affairs Ministry senior information officer Anwar Hossain said, his first namaz-e-janaza will be held today…

By Tim Lister and Tamara Qiblawi, CNN In the early hours of Thursday morning, the head of ISIS died during a US raid in northwest Syria just as the extremist group was in the midst of a revival. Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself and his family after igniting a bomb at the beginning of the operation, according to a senior Pentagon official. Qurayshi succeeded ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 after his demise. When Qurayshi took over the organization, the vast swathes of territory the group controlled — an area larger than the size of the United Kingdom…

There’s hardly a Muslim terrorist attack committed by a single perpetrator in Europe or America in the last five years that the authorities and the media haven’t tried to spin as mental illness. Both Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, the Syrian Muslim mass killer who shot up a Boulder supermarket, and Faisal Akram, who took a Texas temple hostage to secure the release of ‘Lady Al Qaeda’, had their attacks blamed on mental illness. But France continues to lead the world in whitewashing Muslim terrorism as mental illness. When Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish kindergarten director, was murdered by her Muslim neighbor while…