Under the shadow of war in the Middle East, Muslim worshippers around the world unite to celebrate the breaking of the fast

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Stuart Niven suspended after revelations he was struck off as company director, while other candidates have been accused of extremist statements including describing Humza Yousaf as ‘not British’

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, has doubled down on his defence of the party’s vetting by dismissing remarks by candidates backing Tommy Robinson or describing Humza Yousaf as an “Islamist moron” (see 10.12am) as “fruity language”.

It has taken a matter of hours for Reform Scotland’s big launch to fall apart and their true colours to show.

If Nigel Farage refuses to act and remove this candidate, Malcolm Offord must step up and show some leadership himself. This incident has confirmed once and for all how poisonous and chaotic Reform is and I have no doubt that Scots will send them packing.

Again, as I say, this was done in a former life before she became a member of Reform. We’ve all said things in the past that may be intemperate… I am saying that we have to grow up on this and not take offence at every moment in time.

I’ve been very clear that we have brought in a whole range of candidates, 80% of whom are not politicians. They’re real people with real lives who said real things in a past life. Okay, this was said before she was a candidate. She wasn’t even a member of the party at that time.

And what we got in the situation is that in all our lives in the past, we’ve made comments that might sometimes be intemperate. But the issue with this modern world we live in is everything is now written down and remembered. I just think we have to be more, more realistic about the fact that real people say real things, and now she’s a candidate, she will be held to a higher standard.

Liberal Democrats urge the government to ensure the NCA or new National Police Service takes over investigations into serious waste crime. We also need an independent review of the entire waste crime system to crack down on organised gangs once and for all. New powers for the Environmental Agency simply won’t cut it.

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Israel has committed at least 2,073 violations of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

For the first time in history Al-Aqsa is closed for Eid. Where is the Ummah?  – MuslimMatters

Barred from Masjid Al-Aqsa, worshipers pray outside the Old City on Friday morning, the day of Eid.

Israeli forces use stun grenades to prevent Palestinian worshipers from entering the Old City for Eid prayers.

Palestinians gather outside the Old City to pray Eid after being barred by the Israelis from Masjid Al-Aqsa.

 

The post AL-AQSA IS CLOSED appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

At a time when Britain has never felt more divided, we should draw on Christian values to reject hate and focus on what unites us

When you think about the unedifying political furore about the open iftar held in Trafalgar Square, try to bear in mind that every year on Remembrance Day – a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square – the bishop of London leads a public Christian act of lamentation in the open air. It is an act of religious observance which happens in cities, towns and villages across the country. Alongside the hymns sung, there are readings from the Bible and prayers made in the name of Jesus Christ, and a blessing invoking the holy trinity. In Leeds, where I have the honour of leading the service alongside the Roman Catholic dean of Leeds, I am accompanied by leaders from other faiths: Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. We join together in this public, open-air, unmistakably Christian service.

Over years of attending and conducting such services – and others like it such as those held in memory of Queen Elizabeth II – I have never heard a complaint from those of other faiths that such services represented a “domination of the public sphere” or that such services in our civic spaces were “an expression of power and intimidation”.

Arun Arora is bishop of Kirkstall in the diocese of Leeds

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Hundreds of Muslims gathered outside the walls of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem for Eid al-Fitr prayers on Friday after Israeli authorities closed al-Aqsa mosque. Israel said the closure was part of security measures linked to the country's escalating war with Iran, but Palestinians said the move was part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions and entrench control over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site

• ‘The saddest day for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem’: al-Aqsa mosque closed at Eid

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Exclusive: Richard Hermer, who is Jewish, says Tory leader and shadow minister seem ‘to only have an issue with Muslim events’

Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has challenged Kemi Badenoch to say whether she would object to Jewish prayer in public, after the Conservative leader backed one of her shadow ministers who said an Islamic prayer event was intimidating and un-British.

Hermer, one of the UK’s most prominent Jewish politicians, said Badenoch’s decision to support the views of Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, put her on a par with Reform UK and Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist.

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Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions

For the first time since 1967, al-Aqsa mosque – Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site – will be closed at the end of Ramadan on Friday, with tensions rising among Palestinians as Israeli authorities keep the complex shut, forcing worshippers to hold Eid prayers as close as they can to the sealed site.

On Friday morning hundreds of worshippers were forced to pray outside the Old City, as Israeli police barricaded the entrances to the site.

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Thousands of people come together at one of Australia’s biggest mosques to mark the end of Ramadan

• Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke heckled by protesters at Lakemba mosque

• ‘Joy in the midst of much grief’: Australian Eid and Nowruz celebrations overshadowed by war in the Middle East

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‘So many people that I love and care about are worried about the survival of people they love overseas,’ Inaz Janif says

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Inaz Janif would ordinarily attend prayers at the mosque for Eid al-Fitr, the event that marks the end of Ramadan, a sacred month and fasting period for Muslims.

This year, however, she’s doing something a bit different.

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Ziyad Motala, Professor of Law, Howard Law School

A Troubling Spectacle

A troubling spectacle continues during the nightly prayers of Ramadhan. In Islam’s holiest mosques, supplications lavish praise upon the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, and seek divine favour for the strength and victory of the Saudi state and its security forces. Millions of Muslims around the world instinctively respond with “Aameen.” They believe they are participating in devotion. In reality, many are unknowingly affirming prayers that sanctify the ambitions of the Saudi state and its ruler at a moment when that state stands aligned with powers devastating Muslim lands.

The Meaning and Purpose of the Qunoot

Each evening in the month of Ramadan, millions of Muslims stand in prayer during the final phase of the nightly prayer, known as the Witr. In that moment, the imam recites what is called the Qunoot. The word simply means supplication. The imam raises his hands and implores God for mercy, forgiveness, and protection for the community. The congregation responds with a soft but collective “Aameen,” affirming the prayer and making its contents their own. It is a moment meant to embody humility before the Divine. In principle, it is among the most moving practices in the Muslim devotional life. It reminds believers that all authority, all power, and all protection ultimately belong to God alone.

When Supplication Becomes Political Theatre

But segments of the Qunoot have become political theatre. Certain court clerics have transformed the Qunoot into a peculiar spectacle of political flattery. Their supplications have included prayers not only for the Muslim ummah, but for the well-being of the Saudi state and the personal success and triumph of the Saudi rulers. More striking still is the language in which these prayers have been framed. The ruler has been addressed with honorifics such as “Al Amin,” a title intimately associated with the Prophet Muhammad P.B.U.H. himself.

Words shape the moral imagination of believers. In the Islamic tradition, the Prophet was known as Al Amin, the trustworthy, a designation earned through a life of moral credibility long before prophethood was proclaimed. To attach that title to a modern prince presiding over a state of debauchery, spectacle, repression, and geopolitical intrigue where Muslims are being massacred is grotesque clerical flattery bordering on parody. And when millions of Muslims dutifully respond with “Aameen,” they are unknowingly affirming not just devotion but the spectacle itself. They are giving their assent to this sycophancy offered in the language of prayer.

What are Worshippers Affirming?

The supplications have continued with appeals that God strengthen the rulers, grant them victory, empower the Saudi security forces, and preserve the Saudi state from every evil. The congregation of over two million responds with “Aameen.” For countless worshippers, the Arabic phrases are not fully understood. They are participating in an act of devotion and assume that the words being recited reflect the moral spirit of the tradition.

What exactly, then, are Muslims affirming when they say “Aameen”? The modern Saudi state is not an Islamic state. It is a nation state whose ruling order did not arise from Islamic legitimacy but was forged under British patronage and sustained by Western, particularly United States, power. This state claims custodianship of Islam’s holiest places while aligning itself closely with the strategic priorities of the United States and Israel, powers actively engaged in war against Muslims. At the same time, the world watches the devastation of Gaza and the steady seizure of Palestinian land, realities unfolding alongside the strategic partnership linking Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel.

Contradictions in Policy and Practice

One hears supplications for the protection of Muslim lands and the strengthening of the faith, while the political alliances of the state reciting those prayers sit comfortably beside the very forces that are devastating Muslim societies. The dissonance is difficult to ignore. Saudi Arabia’s recent trajectory only sharpens the paradox. The kingdom presents itself as the guardian of Islamic orthodoxy, yet it has simultaneously cultivated a political order increasingly defined by grotesque spectacle, wealth, and strategic alignment with Western power. Its rulers preside over a social transformation built around lewd entertainment and luxury while imprisoning scholars whose religious authority might challenge the state. Clerics who dissent disappear into prisons, while clerics who praise the ruler appear on the pulpits of the two holy mosques.

Beyond its borders, the kingdom’s political footprint is equally troubling. Its war in Yemen produced one of the most severe humanitarian catastrophes of the modern era. Its interventions in the politics of Egypt and elsewhere have strengthened authoritarian rule across the Arab world. It has historically encouraged a regional confrontation with Iran, whose consequences now threaten to engulf the entire Middle East. Against this background, the Qunoot sounds less like supplication and more like state messaging delivered through sacred ritual.

Power, Image, and Religious Authority

There is another irony. Mohammed bin Salman is frequently presented, by admirers and critics alike, as though he were a central figure representing the Islamic world. He is not. He is the ruler of a modern nation state that bears the name of his own family. The very designation “Saudi Arabia” is a historical anomaly. The Prophet Muhammad, may Allah give him peace and blessings, did not name Arabia after himself. Nor did the Rightly Guided Caliphs transform the lands of Islam into dynastic brands. Their authority rested on moral example and communal legitimacy. The modern Saudi state rests on oil wealth, security alliances, and the imposition of a ruling family whose name defines the country itself. To call the Saudi ruler “Al Amin” is theological absurdity.

The Weight of Saying “Aameen”

Yet through the symbolism of Mecca and Medina, the Saudi state possesses a unique capacity to project its voice into the devotional life of Muslims everywhere. When the imam in the Grand Mosque raises his hands in supplication, believers instinctively respond “Aameen.” But prayer is not passive. To say “Aameen” is to affirm the words that have been spoken. Muslims, therefore, confront a quiet but profound question. When the Qunoot asks God to grant victory to illegitimate rulers whose policies align them with all kinds of debauchery and vice, the bombardment of Gaza, the dispossession of Palestinians, and the escalation of war against Iran, should believers reflexively echo that prayer?

There is an even more basic issue. Muslims should not be saying “Aameen” to supplications that ask God to strengthen the nation state of Saudi Arabia or its ruler. Saudi Arabia is not an Islamic state. It is a nation state organised around a ruling family and structured primarily to protect the interests of its political and economic elite. The global Muslim community does not owe devotional affirmation to the success of such a state.

Lessons From Islamic Tradition

Islamic history contains many examples of scholars who refused to sanctify temporal power. Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal endured imprisonment rather than submitting to doctrines imposed by the Abbasid state. Jurists across centuries insisted that religion must restrain rulers rather than ornament their authority. Those precedents were not acts of rebellion. They were acts of fidelity.

Preserving the Integrity of Worship

The Qunoot is meant to remind believers of their dependence on God. It is not meant to consecrate the ambitions of princes. When the language of supplication becomes indistinguishable from the language of court praise, the prayer itself loses its moral clarity. Ramadhan is a season of spiritual awakening. It is also a season of moral reflection. The lesson for Muslims is simple but urgent. Devotion must never become a vehicle for the sanctification of power.

And before saying “Aameen,” a believer should always know what they are agreeing to. For in matters of faith, an unthinking “Aameen” can become the quietest form of political consent.

This article is an opinion piece and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of MuslimMatters.

Related:

Freedom Of Speech And Protest In Islam: The Distorted Saudi View

What Shaykh Muhammad Al Shareef Taught Us About Making Dua

The post When The Qunoot Becomes Politics: Religious Theater in Saudi Arabia appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Israeli soldiers put out cigarettes on my back and called us zombies. While I was released, my brother was used as a human shield and has never returned.

Reform party leader criticised for making comments after event held in London’s Trafalgar Square this week

Muslim leaders have condemned Nigel Farage’s call to ban public prayer by Muslims in the UK as bigoted and warned of a “growing tide of hate” after the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, questioned whether the events fitted “within the norms of British culture”.

Farage was speaking at the launch of Reform UK’s manifesto for the forthcoming Scottish parliament elections when he made the remarks.

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For two years, I felt like a robot, devoid of feeling. But our collective effort to ensure we could pray together again during Ramadan has made me human again.

At the launch of the Conservative local elections campaign on Thursday, Peter Walker asked Kemi Badenoch about her shadow justice secretary’s claim that Muslims praying in Trafalgar square was an ‘act of domination’. Her answer did not clarify the party’s position. Peter discusses with Lexy Topping the problems this kind of culture war may bring the Conservatives. Plus, are Sadiq Khan’s comments on the EU and Angela Rayner’s return to the spotlight a new headache for Keir Starmer?

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Nigel Farage echoed Nick Timothy’s comments after he said public prayer for Ramadan was an ‘act of domination’

• Starmer claims Tories have ‘problem with Muslims’ after Timothy tweet

Cleverly is trying to show a video, but it is not working. So he just invites Kemi Badenoch to start her speech.

The Conservatives are launching their local elections campaign. There is a live feed here.

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Conservative leader says debate not about freedom of religion, but its expression in shared public space

• UK politics live – latest updates

Kemi Badenoch has backed her shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, after he claimed that Islamic prayers taking place in public are intimidating and un-British, with Labour saying the Conservatives had embraced the “gutter” politics of prejudice.

The row began after Timothy posted images on social media of prayer at a Ramadan event in London’s Trafalgar Square, saying mass prayer in public places was “an act of domination” and “straight from the Islamist playbook”.

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We don’t want the world to give us tents and give Israel missiles.

Bundestag bigwig Marcus Faber is now lobbying for Elbit Systems.

This series is a collaboration between Dr. Ali and MuslimMatters, bringing Quranic wisdom to the questions Muslim families are navigating.

The Answer — What 30 Nights With the Quran Built in Muslim Teenagers

Thirty nights ago, a series began with a question.

Who are you — really — when all the masks are removed? 

Tonight that question receives its answer. And this final guide is for the Muslim parent who wants to understand what their teenager received across this Ramadan — and what your role is now that the series has ended.

What the series built — a parent’s summary 

Across 30 nights, the series addressed the central identity crisis of Muslim teenagers in the West through four consecutive weeks of honest, Quranic, psychologically grounded content.

Week 1 — Identity and Belonging — gave teenagers a theological framework for their dual-world experience. The message: you are not a defective Muslim because you navigate multiple worlds. You are a khalifah placed in a specific context for a specific purpose. Your background, your language, your experience of being between worlds — these are your context, not your disqualification.

Week 2 — Relationships and Boundaries — addressed the relational questions that Islamic content rarely approaches directly: friendships with non-Muslims, attraction, toxic relationships, forgiveness, loneliness. The message: your relationships are not separate from your Islam. They are where Islam is lived most concretely.

Week 3 — Doubt, Faith, and Mental Health — went somewhere that most Islamic youth content refuses to go: depression, grief, shame, addiction, and the feeling that struggling means you are failing at Islam. The message: your struggles are not disqualifications. Every prophet this series introduced struggled. Not despite their prophethood — alongside it. Their humanity serves as a powerful example for us, and how they overcame their struggles gives us the role model and the hope.

Week 4 — Purpose, Legacy, and the Long Game — built a comprehensive framework for a purposeful Muslim life: khalifah as the direction, ummah as the community, ikhlas as the motivation, legacy as the time horizon, taqwa as the foundation, becoming as the process. The message: you are building something right now. Plant it. Carry the bowl. The shade is already needed.

And Night 30 said: all of that together is the answer to who you are.

That is what your teenager received. The question now is what you do with it.

The seven declarations — what your teenager now knows

Tonight’s video gave teenagers seven specific answers to the identity question. As a parent, knowing what those seven answers are — and reinforcing them at home — is among the most important things you can do in the days following Ramadan.

1. They are a khalifah — placed here deliberately, with full knowledge of their weakness, for a purpose only they can fulfill in their specific context.
2. They are part of a chain — the product of fourteen centuries of ordinary Muslims who held so that the deen could reach them. And they are responsible for passing it on.
3. They are a person in the middle of their becoming — the confusion and not-yet are not evidence of failure. They are what becoming feels like from the inside.
4. They are someone whose trembling is seen — Allah knows not just what they do, but what they had to overcome to do it. The private struggle, the effort that nobody witnessed — He saw it.
5. They are not just themselves — they are part of a single body brought forth for all of humanity, with a responsibility to the people around them that goes beyond their own community.
6. They are someone carrying a bowl of milk — taqwa as the active, daily practice of protecting their book of deeds, carrying it carefully through everything the world places in their path.
7. They are someone planting trees — right now, in this season, in ways they cannot yet fully see.

These seven declarations are the answer to the Night 1 question. Help your teenager hold them. Ask them which one landed hardest. Name the one you see most clearly in them. Build it into the language of your home.

What the series revealed about your teenager’s interior

Across 30 nights, this series received responses from its audience that reveal something Muslim parents need to understand about what their teenagers are carrying.

The emails and comments that came back were not primarily about theological questions or Islamic rulings. They were about the interior life — the doubt that felt shameful to name, the depression that was being hidden because it seemed like a failure of faith, the shame around specific struggles that had never been told to anyone, the loneliness of feeling like the only one navigating what they were navigating.

Your teenager is carrying more than you know. Not because they are hiding it from you specifically — but because the Islamic content they have access to has not, until very recently, given them a language for those interior experiences. A language that is both Islamically grounded and honest about human struggle.

This series gave them that language. The question is whether you can receive it.

The parent who responds to their teenager’s newly found language — who hears “I related to the Night 15 episode on doubt” or “the Night 20 episode was about me” — with openness rather than alarm, with curiosity rather than correction, with Khadijah’s response rather than a lecture — is the parent whose teenager will keep talking.

Be that parent. The series opened a door. Your response determines whether your teenager walks through it toward you.

The Surat al-‘Asr framework — what Night 30 is asking your family to do

The series opened on Night 1 with Surat al-‘Asr — the framework that knowledge must be acted upon and invited to. It closes on Night 30 with the same instruction.

Tonight’s video makes two specific requests of its viewers:

1. Move the series from the watched category to the lived category. The content has no power as content alone. It becomes real when it becomes the life being lived.
2. Tell someone. Find the person in your life who is asking the same questions and was too afraid to say so. Share it — not as a caption, but as a conversation.

For Muslim parents, both of these requests have direct applications.

The lived category for your family means: the seven declarations are not just things your teenager heard. They are things your family believes and practices and names regularly. The khalifah framework is how you talk about purpose. The chain is how you talk about inheritance. The bowl is how you talk about taqwa. The vocabulary of the series becomes the vocabulary of your home.

The telling someone means: this series is not finished with your family. Think of the family in your community whose teenager needs what this series gave yours. The parent who is struggling to have these conversations and doesn’t know where to start. Share the playlist. Share a specific episode. Let the series do the opening that you might not be able to do alone.

That is how chains extend. One ordinary link at a time.

On FamCinema and what it means for your family

Tonight’s video introduces FamCinema — the media project Dr. Ali has been building alongside this series — and announces the premiere of the Hijrah animated series this Friday as a Eid gift.

For Muslim parents, FamCinema represents something worth paying attention to beyond the entertainment value of a specific series.

It is a demonstration of the tree-planting principle applied to culture. The recognition that Muslim families need media that reflects their values — not as a concession or a sanitized alternative, but as genuinely good entertainment that doesn’t require families to navigate content that conflicts with what they believe. That is a real need. And it is being addressed by someone planting a tree knowing that the shade will take years to grow.

Watch the Hijrah series with your family this Eid. Give your teenager the experience of Muslim-produced media that is funny and human and made for people like them. And if it resonates — tell someone. That is how the tree grows.

The FamCinema channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@FamCinemaOfficial

Final discussion questions for families

For teens:

1. Which of the seven “who you are” declarations from Night 30 lands hardest for you right now? Why that one?
2. What is the one thing from these 30 nights that you are going to actually do differently — not think about, do?
3. Who is the one person in your life you want to share this series with? What is stopping you from doing it today?

For parents:

1. What did you learn about your teenager across this Ramadan — from watching the series, from the conversations it produced, from what they shared or didn’t share — that you didn’t know before?
2. Which of the seven declarations do you most want your teenager to carry into the rest of their life? Have you told them that?
3. What is your family planting together — starting this Eid — that someone after you will sit under?

For discussion together:

1. Read Surat al-‘Asr together. What does “acted upon and invited to” look like for our family in the weeks after Ramadan?
2. Which week of the series was most relevant to where our family actually is right now? What would it look like to go deeper on that week together?
3. Make a du’a together tonight — for the series, for everyone who received it, and for what you are building together as a family. Let it be among the closing supplications of your Ramadan.

Eid Mubarak

This series was built for you — for the Muslim family navigating something genuinely difficult, in a context that doesn’t make it easy, with questions that deserve honest answers.

May He put barakah in it that outlasts all of us. May He make it a sadaqah jariyah that keeps giving shade to people who never knew the name of the person who planted it. May Allah accept it among our acts of worship in this noble month and make it a means of releasing us from the Hellfire …

And may He make your teenager — exactly as they are, in the middle of their becoming — exactly what He placed them here to be. Ameen.

Eid Mubarak. Was-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.

Related:

Running Away From Who We Are | Night 29 with the Qur’an

30 Nights with the Qur’an: A Ramadan Series for Muslim Teens

The post Coming Full Circle: Who Are You Now? | Night 30 with the Qur’an appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.