Syria’s war has transformed the country in both shattering and subtle ways. While many evolutions are for the worse, others inspire cautious optimism: Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances.

Iraqi military and security forces have disappeared dozens of mostly Sunni Arab males since 2014, including children as young as 9, often in the context of counterterrorism operations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 78-page report, “‘Life Without a Father is Meaningless’: Arbitrary Arrests and Enforced Disappearances in Iraq 2014-2017,” draws on research Human Rights Watch has published on enforced disappearances in Iraq since 2014, when Iraqi forces launched anti-ISIS operations, and documents an additional 74 cases of men and four cases of boys detained by Iraqi military and security forces between April 2014 and October 2017 and forcibly disappeared. The enforced disappearances documented are part of a much wider continuing pattern in Iraq. Iraqi officials have failed to respond to inquiries from the families and Human Rights Watch for information about the disappeared.

The Judeo-Islamic tradition has deep historical roots that Zionism and Islamism have tried to erase.

An Urdu novel published in 1869 by Nazir Ahmad, a writer in Delhi, portrays two young Muslim girls at their geography lesson. As they identify various countries on a map, the girls come across the Arabian Peninsula. Their teacher describes it as an empty space infested by marauding Bedouin, one whose only significance lay in its historical role as the site of Islam’s birth.

On the eve of the week-long Muslim festival of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has accused US President Donald Trump of not wanting to solve his country’s disagreements with the United States over jailed US pastor Andrew Brunson.

Women's rights activists and Christian figures rejoiced as Egypt appointed its first Coptic Christian woman as governor of the Nile Delta city of Damietta.

Thirty-three-year-old Mostafa Abdi, a member of Iran’s largest Sufi order and editor of a news outlet focused on the Gonabadi dervish community, appears set to spend the most productive years of his life in an Iranian prison.

Nestled in the hilltops of the central occupied West Bank, an ancient Palestinian Christian village is gearing up for a fight against the Israeli occupation that it has all too much experience with.

The Synod 2018, held  August 7 to 13 in Baghdad, gathered local prelates and those from the diaspora. The tensions between Washington and Tehran worry: no sanctions but diplomacy. The return of Christians and the reconstruction work that are fundamental for the rebirth of Iraq.

The Patriarch of Moscow will travel to Constantinople on the 31st of August. The theme of autocephaly (independence) of the Orthodox Church of Kiev is on the agenda. The request came only from the Ukrainian president, but is also supported by Orthodox in Ukraine and by the Greek-Catholics. Predictions of victory for Bartholomew I, who has a "primacy of honor" among the Orthodox.