By Jon Allsop Yesterday, the president of the United States “fanned the flames of a racial fire.”According to a panoply of major news outlets, Trump “starkly injected” “racially infused” and “racially charged” words into a morning tweetstorm; the language he used was “widely established as a racist trope” and “usually considered an ugly racist taunt.” The remarks were “called racist and xenophobic”; “denounced as racist”; an “example of ‘racism’” (note the quote marks). What …

Zaynab Mukhammad-Dost The Turkish and Turkic Collections at the British Library are the largest collections of manuscript and printed material from the Turkic world housed anywhere in the United Kingdom, says Michael Erdman in an Interview with Zaynab Mukhammad-Dost. What is special about the British Library’s Turkish and Turkic collections? What is the most treasured item? Does the British Museum, …

Maria Tirmizi When she tweeted out a customary Arabic prayer to mourn for the victims of the New Zealand mosque attack, Ilhan Omar was singled out by a major news outlet. A click-bait headline read, “Ilhan Omar shares Muslim verse….” The Democratic Congresswoman from Minnesota is frequently over-scrutinized, misrepresented, and vilified, just for being who she is. She is the …

Kurdish-led group says last of militants cleared from stronghold of Baghuz After almost five years, the battle to dismantle Islamic State’s brutal “caliphate” has ended with an announcement from US-backed forces that the militants have been driven out of their last stronghold of Baghuz, deep in the Syrian desert. Isis had held out for months against the Syrian Democratic Forces …