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...
Islam’s Antidote to Extremism
Islam addresses the topic of extremism much more than many people think. What’s interesting about the Islamic approach is that it solves the problem at its roots instead of attempting to solve the symptoms. My motivation for writing this piece is two fold. First is to counter what has become a fact in the minds of many non-Muslims that Islam is synonymous to extremism. Second and more importantly is to address some relatively recent examples of Muslim extremism and the fact that this goes against the very essence of Islam. The Qurʾān does use the word Ghulow which can fairly be translated as extremism. In an address to the People of the Book, the Jews and Christians, it says: “Oh...
Pope urges ‘mutual respect’ with Islam
VATICAN CITY (AFP) – Pope Francis called on Friday for “mutual respect” between Christianity and Islam and an end to “unfair criticism” in a personal message congratulating Muslims on the feast of Eid al-Fitr. “We are called to respect the religion of the other, its teachings, its symbols, its values,” he said in a statement distributed by the Vatican press office. “I have decided to sign this traditional message myself and to send it to you, dear friends, as an expression of esteem and friendship for all Muslims, especially those who are religious leaders. “We all know that mutual respect is fundamental in any human relationship, especially among people who profess religious belief,” he said. The statement was...
Andalusian fusion: Christianity and Islam
BY GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO ASSOCIATED PRESS For the third time in a week, I’m touring the Alhambra, one of the most popular sites in the world’s fourth most-visited country, and finally I have it all for myself. Not a pushy guide but a bullfrog in one of the fountains is the loudest sound on a late May night in this hilltop Islamic palace complex in southern Spain. I linger to stick my nose into the cabbage-size roses lining the pathways and to gaze over the floodlit red-tinged ramparts. Their massive simplicity belies the infinite intricacy of the palaces inside, and I can easily believe the legend that the last Muslim ruler wept as he left Granada. Centuries later, we...
Swedish women don headscarves after assault on Muslim
Swedish women have been posting photos of themselves in traditional Muslim headscarves in solidarity with a woman attacked apparently for wearing a veil. Among the protesters from various faiths were politicians and TV hosts. The “hijab outcry” campaigners urged the government to “ensure that Swedish Muslim women are guaranteed the right to… religious freedom”. The victim was taken to hospital after the attacker tore off her hijab and hit her head against a car on Saturday. The assailant also shouted racist insults at the woman – who was pregnant – during the attack on Saturday in a Stockholm suburb, the victim’s friends told Sweden’s media. Police are now investigating the incident. ‘March of...
Islam is the last concern for extremists
Last Update: Monday, 22 July 2013 KSA 10:58 – GMT 07:58 Several days ago in New York, an American journalist, who is also a friend, asked me about extremism in Islam and about some extremist fighters who became famed as terrorists. He specifically wanted to know what makes a group of people in the Muslim world raise arms against another Muslim group. We were talking about Afghanistan, Pakistan and the unsettled Iraq, where around 2,500 people lost their lives during the past four months in a wave of sectarian and religious violence and the struggle over power. We were talking about the young girls who were brutally killed in Pakistan on their way to school and about the...
The British Women Converting to Islam
The challenges faced by British women who have converted to Islam have been investigated in a study by the University of Cambridge Centre of Islamic Studies (CIS) and the New Muslims Project. Thousands of British women have converted to Islam but nobody has ever studied the difficulties they face in being accepted, says Shahla Suleiman, the project manager for the study for which 47 converts were interviewed. “Considering the stereotypical and largely negative picture Islam has in the media and society at large …we wanted to understand the seemingly paradoxical issue of why highly educated and professionally successful Western women convert to Islam.” The report says more support is needed for converts, but also recognises the potential converts...
Janet Jackson converted to Islam?
Michael Jackson’s singer sister Janet Jackson had a widely celebrated lavish wedding to billionaire Wissam Al Mana just a few months ago, and since that time Janet hasn’t done any acting or released any music. It has since been reported that Janet has moved to the Middle East and converted to Islam and changed her name to Jannat. Surprisingly, she also has disavowed music and left the industry entirely. Janet says that part of the reason she wants to leave music is so that she and her husband can live a private life away from the media. Al Mana made his fortune through the Al Mana Retail group, which is owned and controlled by his family. This is...
I Am a Muslim Woman Who Finds Freedom Behind My Veil
What does a ‘real’ woman look like? Is it in the curve of her hips or the price of her Manolo’s? Is it the way she styles her hair or the allure of her eyes peeking behind Chanel sunglasses? Because the Western world’s expression of feminine beauty lends itself to the promotion of less clothing equating to more freedom, Muslim women and their fully covered frocks are often viewed as oppressive and diminishing. There is a distinct difference between being pretty and beautiful yet, for two women who are devoted Muslims, their beauty has everything to do with their choice to cover themselves. Afshan Rehman, a 25-year-old psychology student in Illinois daydreams about helping women to heal their...
Why Do Westerners Convert to Islam?
This is a transcript of part of an interview conducted by Dr. Tariq Ramadan with sister Batool al-Toma, director of the New Muslims project at the Islamic Foundation, UK, in the weekly TV program ‘Islam and Life.’ In the interview, sister Batool, herself a convert to Islam, explains the different reasons that encourage westerners to decide to become Muslim. Tariq Ramadan: This week we are going to discuss the challenges facing people who convert to Islam. What do Westerners see in Islam that makes them decide to become Muslims? Did the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or Western support for Israel encourage westerners to convert? In 2009, approximately 40,000 Brits, 70,000 French nationals and 100,000 Americans became Muslims. What...
Former Guantanamo Guard: American Muslims Best Example of Islam
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – A former Guantanamo guard who embraced Islam during his service in the notorious detention center has praised American Muslims as representing the best example of true Islam. “You can’t be afraid to be a Muslim in public,” Terry Holdbrooks Jr., 29, was quoted as saying by All Alabama website. He urged the Muslim community in the US to remain united and open to their neighbors. “Tell your neighbors you’re Muslim. Invite them into your home. Invite them to visit the masjid to see our secret bomb factories.” The United States is home to a Muslim minority of between six to eight million. A recent survey by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said that...
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