China will push for endorsement at the Asean summit of a mechanism to avoid potential maritime clashes, a leading Chinese think tank said, as regional leaders try to find ways to address the South China Sea dispute. Although the contested waters are expected to be discussed at the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which kicked off in Vientiane, Laos, on Tuesday, diplomats said they did not expect any breakthroughs. Premier Li…
Posts published in “Day: September 7, 2016”
China’s outpost of Sansha in the South China Sea has sent vessels to drive away at least 370 foreign ships from disputed waters in the area in recent years, according to an article penned by its mayor, Xiao Jie. The patrols were carried out from Sansha, a prefecture-level city set up four years ago to administer the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands and the Macclesfield Bank, called the Zongsha Islands by China. They have patrolled 324…
Matthew S. Erie, a trained lawyer and ethnographer who teaches at Oxford University, lived for two years in Linxia, a small city in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu. Known as China’s Mecca, it is a center of religious life for the Hui, an ethnic minority numbering 10 million who practice Islam. Along with the Turkic Uighurs, they are one of 10 officially recognized ethnic groups that practice Islam, making the total population of Muslims…
A suicide bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital last week was ordered by Uyghur militants active in Syria and carried out by a member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Kyrgyzstan’s state security service said on Tuesday. The suicide bomber, whose car rammed the gates of the embassy on August 30, was an ethnic Uyghur who held a Tajik passport in the name of Zoir Khalilov, the State Committee for…
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched renewed criticism of Saudi Arabia over how it organises the Hajj after a crush last year killed hundreds of pilgrims, many of whom were Iranians. Khamenei has gone on to suggest that the Muslim countries must deliberate on ending Riyadh’s control of the annual pilgrimage. Saudi Arabia has been the custodian of Islam’s most revered places in Mecca and Medina, and it takes this responsibility rather seriously and…
AFTER Iranians were unable to make it to Saudi Arabia for annual pilgrimage due to disagreement on several issues between the two countries, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has issued a harsh statement against the Kingdom and its leadership. He has also repeated demand of Tehran for joint management of Hajj on the plea that Saudis were not capable of managing affairs leading to tragedies as we witnessed last year. Muslim world is passing through…
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s top cleric said Iranians are “not Muslims”, after Iran’s supreme leader launched a fresh tirade over the kingdom’s handling of the Haj pilgrimage, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. “We must understand these are not Muslims, they are children of Magi and their hostility towards Muslims is an old one. Especially with the people of Sunna,” Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh told Makkah daily, referring to pre-Islamic beliefs in Iran. The grand mufti’s comments…