Kenyan Muslims, Christians Vow Unity
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan clerics across the religious divide vowed Tuesday to not allow sectarian violence to erupt following attacks on churches over the weekend that killed at least 15 people. The Inter-Religious Council of Kenya said Muslims will form vigilante groups alongside Christians to guard churches in Kenya’s North Eastern Province, where the latest attacks occurred. Adan Wachu, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims and the chairman of Inter-Religious Council, said the weekend attacks, which are being blamed on an al-Qaida-linked militant group from Somalia, are meant to trigger sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims. Wachu said clerics will actively preach against retaliation to prevent violence from spreading in Kenya like it has in...
The Muslims Who Saved Jews From The Holocaust...
A new exhibition aims to celebrate the role Muslims played in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. The Righteous Muslim Exhibition is being launched at the Board of Deputies of British Jews in Bloomsbury, central London. Photographs of 70 Muslims who sheltered Jews during World War II will be displayed alongside stories detailing their acts of heroism. The exhibition hopes to inspire new research into instances of collaboration between the Muslim and Jewish communities. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust, honours nearly 25,000 so-called “righteous persons” who risked their lives to protect the Jewish community during Nazi Germany’s reign of terror. Some 70 Muslims have recently been added to the list. The exhibition explores...
Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: How Islam Shaped the Founders...
One of the nastiest aspects of modern culture wars is the controversy raging over the place of Islam and Muslims in Western society. Too many Americans say things about Islam and Muslims that would horrify and offend them if they heard such things said about Christianity or Judaism, Christians or Jews. Unfortunately, those people won’t open Denise A. Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders. This enlightening book might cause them to rethink what they’re saying. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an examines the intersection during the nation’s founding era of two contentious themes in the culture wars—the relationship of Islam to America, and the proper relationship between church and state. The story that it tells ought to be familiar to most...
Our Founding Fathers Included Islam
[He] sais “neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” — Thomas Jefferson, quoting John Locke, 1776 At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day. That he owned a Qur’an reveals Jefferson’s...
Christians Not Islam’s Enemies, Says Malaysian Minister of Islamic Affairs...
Islam does not have any enmity towards Christians, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom, in response to a parliamentary question today. Jamil, who is the minister in charge of Islamic affairs, said while Islam is the religion of the federation, other religions are free to be practised. Jamil said this in response to a supplementary question from DAP’s Beruas Member of Parliament Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham. Ngeh querried if there was any truth in a report on the Friday sermon prepared by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) at a mosque on August 30, in which Christians were labelled as enemies of Islam. Jamil however sidestepped Ngeh’s question on the Friday...
Terrorism has no place in Islam: Turkey’s top imam...
The president of the Directorate General for Religious Affairs (Diyanet), Mehmet Görmez, has dismissed suggestions that Islam could be used to justify recent attacks on civilians in Kenya and Pakistan, saying terrorism had no place in Islam. It is impossible to find references in Islam that permit any attacks on people of different religious faiths across the breadth of the Islamic world, he said. “These things are totally outside of Islam and are things Islam rejects and never accepts,” Görmez said Oct.1, referring to recent attacks in Kenya and Pakistan, at a meeting in Istanbul. More than three dozen people still remain unaccounted for almost a week after the end of the four-day terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate...
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