The National Evangelical Church of Kuwait serves as a multicultural meeting place in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, the church's minister said on Tuesday in an exclusive interview with EFE.

Pastor Emmanuel Gharib, the first Gulf-born priest to head a Protestant church, explained that his congregation was made up of 85 ethnicities, with many churchgoers having moved to Kuwait for work.

Amid the Saudi-caused horrific human tragedy in Yemen and the ongoing investigation into the premeditated murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Bahraini regime has imposed a life sentence on Shia cleric Sheikh Ali Salman on the flimsy charge that he colluded with Qatar.This illegal sentence by the Bahraini Court of Appeal was handed down yesterday after the Bahraini High Court of First Tier had acquitted him of these charges. The case has attracted little media attention.

Al-Sahwa al-Islamiya (‘Islamic Awakening’) – otherwise known as Sahwa – was one of the most powerful social and political movements in Saudi Arabia. Its origins date back to the 1950s and 1960s, when thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood fled violent repression across the region, especially Egypt, and came to the conservative kingdom.

Iran has steadily expanded its strategic influence across the Middle East in large part due to its cultivation of a network of foreign co-religionist militant clients. Those clients have enabled Iran to fight adversaries by proxy in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran's growing regional influence is often credited to the shared religious ties and loyalties of its clients. This article challenges that notion by examining Iran's post-1979 track record of developing clients and argues that, although Iran's successes—such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraq's Badr—are well known, its failures to develop or retain the loyalty of clients have received much less attention. This article finds that Iran's relations with its clients are strongest when three conditions exist: first, those clients share Iran's theocratic interpretation of Shi'a Islam; second, Iran is the sole patron or the leading outside source of support to the client; and third, the client either shares or does not oppose Iran's ambitions in its country and agenda in the region. In cases when all those factors are present, Iran has been successful at preserving strong ties with clients over time. However, if one of those conditions is absent, then Iran's ties to a client can be susceptible to weakening and outside competition. These findings have important implications for the future of Iranian influence in the region and the Middle East more broadly.

According to the Human Rights Activist’s website, two music institution in Shiraz that employed two Baha’i women were shut down recently on orders of the Judiciary because they had hired the two women.

The institutions teach music to children. The two Baha’i women, identified as Nora Pourmoradian and Elaheh Samizadeh were detained on September 16 and were released on bail on October 10. 

Safwat Shehata, a man in his 40s from Upper Egypt’s Minya Governorate, stands outside the entrance of the emergency room at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital on the outskirts of Cairo. Inside, four of his relatives are receiving treatment for injuries sustained in Friday’s militant attack, in which gunmen ambushed Coptic Christians returning from a trip to the St. Samuel Monastery in Minya.

Dozens of Sufi prisoners are being illegally held in a ward for drug-addicted prisoners in the Great Tehran Penitentiary (GTP), one of their relatives told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The source, who requested anonymity for security purposes, said a complaint by a group of the detainees’ families remains unanswered more than two months after it was filed.

Among those calling for a ceasefire in the disastrous Yemen conflict is Bishop Paul Hinder, apostolic vicar for Southern Arabia. Though the path out of war is difficult and requires the warring parties to overcome deep mistrust, both Christians and Muslims are praying for peace and justice.

Zoroastrianism is one of the smallest religions in the world. Yet despite its obscurity, its influence continues to be felt. The notions of heaven and hell, Judgment Day and the final revelation, humans as free moral agents, free choice, messianism, and angels and demons all originated in the teachings of Zarathustra, Zoroastrianism’s founder. The religion contains both monotheistic and dualistic features. There is an unequal battle between good and evil, light and dark, but eventually the truth will prevail. All humans must join this struggle because of their capacity for free choice.

The Sunni ‘ulamāʾ (clerics) of Saudi Arabia have struggled to cope with the country's modernisation and socio-political changes affecting the founding Saudi religious traditions developed by Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in the eighteenth century. Although some ‘ulamāʾare resistant to change, others have cautiously embraced the progression of Saudi society, including by modifying their religious positions to suit evolving circumstances. This has occasioned both contestations and negotiations among Saudi religious circles, at times leading to vigorous debates over the authenticity of Saudi religious identity.

At least seven people were killed and nearly 20 injured on Friday in a militant attack on two buses and one microbus carrying Coptic Christians back from the St. Samuel Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Upper Egypt’s Minya Governorate, according to a statement released by the official spokesperson for the Coptic Orthodox Church on Facebook.

Islamic studies teachers in the UAE are failing to adequately engage with their students over fears they may cause offence or stray into politically sensitive areas, experts have warned.

A small-scale study found some pupils were showing a worrying lack of interest in the subject, despite newly revised curriculums aimed at promoting religious tolerance and understanding.