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...
Muslim Doctors Promote Harmony with Free Clinic in Cincinnati
At Thanksgiving 2009, when he had to be rushed to the emergency room at Mercy Hospital Anderson, a nurse referred him to a free clinic that had just opened in the adjacent medical office building. The Muslim Clinic of Ohio, Cincinnati Chapter, now known as the Mercy Care Clinic, was started by a group of local Muslim physicians. “I think a lot of the American public sees the news and thinks if they see a Muslim that they’re automatically a terrorist,” said Bowling, 53, of Anderson Township. The Muslims Bowling knows are dedicated physicians volunteering their time to care for him and providing him with life-saving medicine. They’ve given him Kroger pharmacy cards, redeemable for $4 prescriptions, and...
Seven Muslim Americans on Ballot in Suburban Chicago
April 04, 2011 Kane Farabaugh | Chicago, Illinois When it started last year, the non-profit group Project Mobilize, or Project M, hoped to change the political landscape in suburban Chicago by promoting Muslim Americans as election candidates. So far, there are no Muslim Americans serving as elected officials in the Chicago area. But Project M hopes that will change in municipal elections April 5. In the countdown to election day, Maha Hasan is making a final push to get out the vote. She is running for a position as a trustee with the Justice Public Library. Justice is a Chicago suburb. “The demographics have significantly changed. You see a lot more Polish immigrants coming in. You see a...
Innovative Program Trains Pastors, Imams, Rabbis Together
February 25, 2011 Monaliza Noormohammadi | Claremont, California There’s an ambitious effort under way, to change the way religious leaders in the United States are educated. It’s a new theological program which plans to train Muslim, Jewish, and Christian clergy together. In one southern California classroom, scholars and students from the three major Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – are examining sacred texts, focusing on their spiritual commonalities. This course on interreligious leadership is part of a new graduate program taking form at the Claremont School of Theology — an initiative that would train future pastors, rabbis and imams side-by-side, as they work toward their theological degrees. “We think it’s the world’s first shared curriculum in...
More Muslim Americans on Ballot in Chicago
February 19, 2011 Kane Farabaugh | Chicago Much of the attention on Chicago’s local elections February 22 is focused on the race for mayor. Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and former Senator Carol Moseley Braun lead a list of candidates seeking the office currently held by Mayor Richard Daley. But in those same elections, an increased number of Muslim American candidates also are seeking positions on Chicago’s city council. Ahmed Khan is running for alderman (city council member) in Chicago’s 50th Ward. He is the son of Indian immigrants and knows many neighborhood people from working at his parent’s grocery store. “We talk about grassroots politics, and grass roots activism,” said Khan. “But I think...
USC Program Helps to Train Young Muslim Leaders
Mike O’Sullivan | Los Angeles February 18, 2011 A new generation of Muslim American leaders is emerging in the United States. And a project at the University of Southern California called American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute is helping to train them. The American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute’s approach includes stretching exercises and heart-to-heart sharing of personal stories. One goal is to help young Muslim leaders counteract negative sentiments, like the anti-Muslim protests last year surrounding plans to build an Islamic center near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. Khuram Zaman, who helps to run an Internet-based Islamic educational site, said, “I think the community in general feels like it is under attack, but...
Muslims 1/4 World’s Population by 2030
January 27, 2011 Jerome Socolovsky A major research institute in Washington, DC, is predicting that the global Muslim population will grow by more than a third over the next two decades – with significant increases in Europe and the United States. However, it also expects that the overall rate of growth will begin to slow down. The report called the Future of the Global Muslim Population was prepared by the widely respected Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Researchers said it is a synthesis of data from around 1,500 different sources including national censuses, health surveys and other studies. It defines a Muslim as someone who self-identifies as a Muslim, not whether he or she is secular...
A Comparative Glance at Constitutional History of British U.S & Medinan Islamic Constitution...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA17Ooz3iRQ[/youtube]...
A Woman’s Reflection on Leading Prayer
On March 18, 2005, Amina Wadud (pictured above) led the first female-led jum`ah (Friday) prayer. On that day, women took a huge step towards being more like men. But did we come closer to actualizing our God-given liberation? Written by Yasmin-Mogahed I don’t think so. What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God—not in relation to men. But as Western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left—except men. As a result, the Western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing, she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the...
Muslim-American Rapper Bridges Faith and Music
December 27, 2010 Arash Arabasadi | New York City Music and religion often go hand-in-hand. The traditions of many religions bring song and prayer together to engage followers of all ages and faiths. This type of crowd participation helps create the religious experience. Often, the American popular music scene is at odds with the beliefs of devout, religious followers. But, for one American rapper, the mixing of those two worlds serves as a tool to bridge faiths, cultures and stereotypes. Where else but in the heart of New York City could one find a Muslim, American, Irish-Iranian rapper? His name is Cyrus McGoldrick. He says he tries to channel all of the cultures that he’s been a product....
US Group Launches Campaign to Promote Peaceful Image of Islam
December 21, 2010 Peter Fedynsky | New York Many Muslims are concerned that terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam are creating a false impression that the faith is violent by its very nature. A group of American Muslims has launched a campaign at Times Square in New York City to defend Islam against that impression. Amid the blaze of lights at Times Square in New York City are signs advertising a range of goods and services — from restaurants to theaters, from pharmaceuticals to the New York Yankees baseball team. This holiday season, there is also a 15-second video sponsored by Muslims for Peace, a group that follows the pacifist tradition within Islam. It promotes a...
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