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...
So, What Did the Muslims Do for the Jews?
By David J Wasserstein, May 24, 2012 Follow The JC on Twitter Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christendom – through the medieval period into the modern world. By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition...
IMF Endorses Islamic Finance, Warns it Must be Implemented Better
(Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund has endorsed the principles of Islamic finance, saying it could prove safer than conventional finance, but the multilateral lender warned Islamic bankers that they must tighten rules and follow them more consistently. A report released by the IMF this week showed the lender’s growing interest in Islamic banking, which is expanding in much of the world. Last October, the IMF launched discussions with an external advisory group of Islamic finance experts and industry bodies. The IMF’s report noted that because Islamic banking forbids pure monetary speculation and stresses that deals should be based on real economic activity, it could pose less risk than conventional banking to the stability of financial systems. This...
Practicing Islam At A Catholic University
At Boston College, a Jesuit Catholic university where 70 percent of students identify as Catholic, Fatmah Berikaa says she is the only student who lives on campus and wears a hijab. Berikaa, an Egyptian-American who grew up in Massachusetts, says she chose BC for its academic programs, its friendly campus and its financial aid. She lives in a dorm on the Upper Campus with other first-years. Berikaa hopes to teach and is studying secondary education and English, with a focus in English as a second language, and minoring in Arabic. Berikaa talked to The Huffington Post about her experiences on campus — what she worried about before starting at the school, how strangers approach her with questions, and...
Muslims Pray in Solidarity with Christian Victims of Terror
A small group of muslims staged a picket in the Cape Town CBD on Wednesday to show their solidarity with christian families who lost loved ones in recent attacks by muslim extremists. “We are here to show Christian families we too are heartbroken about their loss,” said Qutb Hendricks, one of the picketers gathered outside the St Georges Cathedral. The picketers who were from all over the country were taking time out of their holiday. “Islam is a peaceful religion. The likes of jihadi like Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab are twisting Islam for their crimes,” said Hendricks. The picketing followed the massacre of 148 Kenyan students over the Easter weekend by al-Shabaab militants. It also coincided with the...
Michigan Man to Recite Muslim Call to Prayer in 50 States
Holding his hands over his ears, Jameel Syed stood in front of the congregation at a Farmington Hills mosque, calling the faithful to prayer. “God is the greatest,” the Auburn Hills man recited in a melodious voice in Arabic that extended the vowels. “There is no god but God … Come to prayer.” The scene inside the Tawheed Center mosque on Thursday night is similar to what happens five times a day at mosques around the world, a resonant voice that cries out to remind believers that it’s time to worship God. Called the “adhan,” the Muslim call to prayer is one of the more familiar parts of Islamic life, and one that Syed, 40, has become known...
Female Muslim Comedian Aizzah Fatimah in Demand
One of the last things many people might expect a Muslim Pakistani-American woman to do when she takes the stage is crack a joke, openly talk about smoking weed, or say that she is gay. Conversations about South Asian women in America are more usually limited to topics like early marriages, abuse and oppression. If the woman happens to be Muslim, fundamentalism and terrorism are often added to the narrative. As Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie summed it up: “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” A bunch of young Muslim Pakistani-American women, however, are now completing that picture. Not only are they pushing the boundaries on how desi Muslim...
Experience Hijab Offered Insight to Participants
The Daily News | Lauren Chapman Published 11 hours ago Updated 11 hours ago Lauren Chapman is a senior journalism news and telecommunications major and writes ‘Miss Know-It-All’ for The Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Lauren at lechapman@bsu.edu. On April 7, I tried to figure out what hair style would work best for the Muslim Student Association’s Experience Hijab event, which offered people the opportunity to wear a hijab in the Atrium. Muslim Student Association President Mahnoor Ayesha helped tuck my insanely fluffy hair into the fushia scarf I picked out. Ayesha asked me what I noticed was different about my appearance. My already big, blue eyes were...
Muslim Women Have Healthier Self-Image
The hijab, or headscarf, is often portrayed in the West as a symbol of victimization—and by many Muslims as a badge of religious and cultural identity. In Europe, anti-hijab sentiment has reached fever pitch in recent years. In China, the government went so far as to offer reward money for turning in women wearing headscarves. In the Canadian province of Quebec, a leading opposition nationalist party wanted to ban the headscarf and all other religious symbols for public workers. The move failed but nearly 70% of Quebec’s citizens supported it. Lost in the often vitriolic debate, however, are the voices of Muslim women. A new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Westminster in the UK and...
Muslim Teen Girls Highly Confident
It was the 16-year-old girl wearing a hijab, who spoke about feminism at Glastonbury, who first took my breath away. In front of thousands of muddy concert goers, she noted she was probably the only overtly Muslim person present. She spoke about living in a world where the odds are still stacked against women. Those same odds are even more heavily stacked against Muslim women: employment discrimination, Islamophobia, social stereotyping and cultural expectations add to the challenges they face. Like their peers, these young Muslim women are very much the selfie generation. Fashion, consumerism and online communities play a powerful role in their lives. And while feminism is undergoing a digitally-driven revival – faith is increasingly unfashionable, at...
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 for the elite athletes, why not for regular women...
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