RECENT FROM Attitudes
Study: Radicalized Muslims Have Little Actual Knowledge Of Islam...
Extremists and Islamophobes alike have attempted to paint violent factions within Islam as the true expression of the faith. But a new study gives credence to what countless Muslim leaders, activists and scholars have argued: that groups like the self-proclaimed Islamic State are Muslim in name alone. A group of German scholars at the Universities of Bielefeld and Osnabrück analyzed 5,757 WhatsApp messages found on a phone seized by police following a terrorist attack in the spring of 2016. The messages were exchanged among 12 young men involved in the attack. The attack itself was not identified in the report. Deutsche Welle noted that the timeframe suggested it may...
RECENT FROM Sports
Boxing Champ Launches Sports Hijab...
A boxing champion from the East End has created a sports hijab to help more Muslim women get into combat sports. Ruqsana Begum (below) – who is the current British female Atomweight Muay Thai boxing champion – runs personal training sessions and women-only sessions in the sport at the Osmani Centre in Whitechapel. She said: “I came up with the idea during the Olympics. I was interested in the story of an American athlete who was told she couldn’t compete wearing her hijab due to health and safety reasons, so her father created one that was approved for her to fight in. “I thought if they can create one...
RECENT FROM Service
Is Islamic Law an Answer for Humanitarians?...
DUBAI, 24 April 2014 (IRIN) – Humanitarian action today is largely taking place in Muslim-majority countries where some combatants turn to Islamic law, among other sources, to guide their military behaviour. As a result, in the last decade, aid and advocacy agencies have increasingly tried to understand Islamic law in order to use its humanitarian provisions as tools of negotiation with armed groups in the Muslim world. This is particularly helpful in engaging Islamist armed groups, some of whom reject international humanitarian law (IHL). Some aid agencies try to situate their arguments for access or protection of civilians within a religious context, sometimes using scholars, mullahs or other religious...
France Has Problems With All Religions — Not Just Islam
A couple of months ago, the French media reported on yet another clash between religious extremists and state authorities. Fifty boys from a private religious school near Paris arrived at a public lycée to take their final examination; however, when two women serving as their proctors met them, there was a standoff. The students, citing religious scruples, refused to enter the room. After a few tense minutes, the school authorities blinked first: They agreed to replace the two female proctors with men. The students, by the way, were wearing yarmulkes. This latest bulletin from the battered no-man’s land that lies between republican France and its religious radicals came to mind as I read René Guitton’s “La France des...
Jesuit Education Leads to Conversion to Islam
Rod Dreher of The American Conservative recently told a surprising anecdote. During my years as a Catholic, more than a few times I would meet someone who had left the faith, and would credit their Jesuit education for having opened their eyes. Just now, I heard the Muslim scholar Reza Aslanon Fresh Air, talking about his new book. Terry Gross mentioned that he (Aslan) had been born into Islam, but his parents fled with him from Iranian Revolution. In America, his father became atheist, but Aslan became an Evangelical Christian. His mother followed him into Christianity. But then, studying at the Jesuit-run Santa Clara University, Aslan encountered Jesuit priests who encouraged him to go deeper into Islam, the...
Assembly of Experts Says Takfiri Current Contrary to Islam
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Takfiri groups, which are committing various crimes in the name of religion, are a deviant current and their acts amount to heresy and run counter to the tenets of Islam, Iran’s Assembly of Experts said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement also urges the world Muslims elites to stand against the Takfiri Salafist current “which is heresy in religion and is not in conformity with the Qu’ran and Islam … and to condemn this current, and any form of fratricide.” The conflict in Syria and the prospects of a military attack against that country by some western powers featured high in the statement. The assembly members warned “the US, Israel and European governments...
Working Women and Islam
Whoever thinks that women should be confided to the comforts of their homes, ‘like before’, obviously has no idea about the good old days. This second installment in the series of articles on Women and Islam focuses on working women. The presented excerpt, from a study titled The Urban Economic Life of Women in Islamic Egypt, was first published in 2007 by the Women and Memory Forum — founded in 1995 by a group of women academics, researchers and activists aiming to highlight, and revive, the role of Arab women in history as a means of empowerment. The study explores the presence of women in the economic and mercantile life of Islamic Egypt up to the end of the Fatimid Caliphate....
Pope Francis, King Abdullah II Of Jordan On Syria: Dialogue Is The ‘Only Option’...
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis and Jordan’s King Abdullah II reaffirmed that dialogue is the “only option” to end the conflict in Syria, just as the United States and its European allies consider launching a military strike against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The two leaders met for the first time on Thursday (Aug. 29) at the Vatican. The pontiff and the king, accompanied by his wife Queen Rania, talked in private for 20 minutes. According to an official Vatican statement, during the meeting “special attention” was given to Syria’s “tragic situation.” Talks of a possible Western military intervention in the Syrian crisis intensified after reports of a chemical weapons attack against civilians in Damascus last week....
Jordan’s king decries anti-Christian violence, calls upon Christians to defend Islam
A week after meeting with Pope Francis, King Abdullah II of Jordan spoke at a conference on the plight of Christians in the Middle East and decried violence against them. “We support every effort to preserve the historical Arab Christian identity, and safeguard the right to worship freely, based on a rule in both the Christian and Islamic faiths that underlines love of God and love of neighbor,” said the king, according to The Jordan Times. “We are proud that Jordan constitutes a unique model of coexistence and fraternity between Muslims and Christians,” he continued. “We also believe that the protection of the rights of Christians is a duty rather than a favor. Arab Christians have played a key...
First Presbyterian Church in Farmington leads classes on Islam and Christianity
FARMINGTON — With turmoil in the Middle East appearing in the news on an almost daily basis, the Rev. Glenn Perica of Farmington’s First Presbyterian Church believes now is the time to educate people about Islam and how it compares to Christianity. “Ever since 9/11, we who did not understand very much about the Muslim faith certainly have been exposed to it,” Perica said. A 10-week course entitled “Christianity and Islam: So Much In Common, So Far Apart” introduces people to the faith. The course begins Sept. 4 at Farmington’s First Presbyterian Church. The course aims to help Christians understand the similarities and differences between the two world religions. Walter Declerck of Dar al Islam, an Abiquiú-based Islamic...
Islam Rising Among UK Youth
“The large number of young people identifying as Muslims – much larger than previous generations – suggests that Islam will soon be a much more significant force in this country than it is at the moment,” Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said on his group’s website on Tuesday, September 10. “This confirms the rapid downward trend among Christians and bodes extremely ill for the future of that religion in Britain,” he added. Released earlier this month, the poll of more than 20,000 people was commissioned by Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative party deputy chairman. Titled, “Small island: Public opinion and the politics of Immigration,” the poll was mainly about attitudes to...
Somalia: Fatwa Against Al Shabab, ‘It Has No Place In Islam’
September 12, 2013 Some 160 Somali religious scholars have issued a fatwa (judgment or learned interpretation in the Islamic faith) against the al Shabab, saying the group “has no place in Islam”. It is the first time Somali religious leaders have come up with a fatwa against the group, which controls vast rural areas. The announcement comes as residents of Bula Burte, in central Somalia, denounced that the al Shabab Islamists executed a young man and performed a double amputation in front of a crowd of dozens of people. The fatwa establishes that al Shabab “is not an Islamic movement” but an extremist group with “an erroneous ideology” that comes together “to kill Somalis without any legitimate reason...
Why Justin from Texas Accepted Islam
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsI9gneC9w[/youtube] In this edition of the show we talk to Justin about his entrance into Islam. He explains his earlier plan to become a Christian minister and how discussions with a Muslim man changed his life...
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