‘They have no religion’. This is the most common accusation labelled against the Alawis of Syria. Scorned by sectarian Sunnis and sometimes by orthodox Shi’a, the Alawis are seen as heretics.

Saudi Arabia killed my father. There was no violence. No Frank Gardner-style hail of bullets. There was no sound of shrill sirens. Crowds did not gather to witness robed figures dancing in the shadows.

As prison dramas go, one immediately sees why Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet has garnered so much praise, not to mention a flurry of prizes, since it hit the big screen in 2009.

John Siddique is a British author who was born in 1964 in Rochdale, Lancashire to an Irish Catholic mother and a Muslim father originally from Jullundur (a city which after Partition was renamed Jalandhar and came to be situated in the Indian Punjab).

I have been trying to get to Gaza for the last few years. I have no problem in getting into the West Bank part of Palestine. When I tell Israeli immigration at Ben Gurion airport the purpose of my visit is ‘to pray’ they hasten to cut the bureaucratic knots short to let me speed my way to Al Quds.

Brandon Stanton began a photography blog in 2010 entitled ‘Humans of New York’. He trawled the streets of the US city, initially with the aim of capturing the pictures of 10,000 strangers simply going about their business. His project evolved into a montage of flourishing New York. Photos are accompanied by illustrative text, a snippet… Read more »

Malcolm began his speech with ‘As-salaam aliakum’. ‘Walaikum salaam’ the crowd chanted back. But before he could say anything else, a man in the front row stood up, walked briskly to the rostrum, and shot Malcolm with a sawed-off shotgun.

James Heartfield’s history tells the story of a dynamic organisation campaigning between 1836 and 1909 through the midst of highly fluctuating colonial enterprise. As notions of Empire evolved and became engrossed in competing socio-political ideologies, the Aborigines’ Protection Society attempted to place humanitarian concern for indigenous populations at the forefront of colonial policy.

Out of It is an ingeniously plotted, lyrical novel, equally at home with email and ancient Umayyad verse, and attentive to the poetic resonance of the most mundane scenarios. Its existence is testament to the extraordinary resistance of the Palestinians to their planned annihilation.