According to Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University whose research focusses on Saudi Arabia’s Salafi movement, beards are sunnah, recommended but not required of Muslim men. Beard styles are a subject of intense discussion among Islamic scholars, Haykel told me when I spoke to him by phone. The specific length of a beard, the way it is trimmed, whether or not it is dyed: these distinctions make a deliberate statement about the wearer’s religious affiliations and the degree of his piety—or the degree of piety that he wishes to have imputed to him. “The Muslim Brotherhood wear it in a particular way,” Haykel said. “The Salafis wear it in a different way. The Hanafis wear it in yet another way.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-saudi-woman-is-threatened-after-tweeting-about-beards – 2/19/2014

Let’s start with what I’m not going to do.

I’m not going to accuse you of staying silent in the face of the horrific atrocities being committed around the world by your co-religionists. Most of you have loudly and unequivocally condemned groups like the Islamic State (ISIS), and gone out of your way to dissociate yourselves from them. You have helped successfully isolate ISIS and significantly damage its credibility.

I’m also not going to accuse you of being sympathetic to fundamentalists’ causes like violent jihad or conversion by force. I know you condemn their primitive tactics like the rest of us, maybe even more so, considering the majority of victims of Islamic terrorists are moderate Muslims like yourselves. On this, I am with you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/an-open-letter-to-moderat_b_5930764.html – 10/07/2014

Once, Israel was blamed for everything. But Israel is not our enemy anymore. We see how Israel opened its doors to our injured. We see how Syrian children are treated in Assad’s prisons and how they are treated in Israeli hospitals. Israel gave food while Assad starved his own people. Syria has only one enemy now: the Assad regime backed by Iran and Hezbollah. I meet with Syrian dissidents and military leaders daily and have seen how, after decades of brainwashing, their mentality has begun to change.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/09/syrian-rebel-wants-a-new-ally-israel.html – 5/9/2014.

Putin’s statism has created an atmosphere in which oligarchs and firms targeted by sanctions are able to lobby the Kremlin for a pay-out from the state budget.

Twice over the last three months, Rosneft has requested financial assistance from the Russian government to mediate the impact of sanctions. Together, these requests are worth in excess of Rs2.5tn ($86bn).

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/10/30/guest-post-as-russian-growth-slides-putin-pushes-self-reliance/ – 10/30/2014.