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...
Interfaith Program Joins Muslims and Jews in Prayer
On Feb. 7, at Shabbat services at Temple Beth Hillel (TBH) — a Reform shul in Valley Village — a small, attractive woman sang religious songs she had coauthored. In a sweet, self-assured voice — with undertones of depth and strength — Ani Zonneveld, brimming with heartfelt energy, sang about light and prayer and soul, words the 50 or 60 congregants had often heard during Jewish services. There was one word, however, that stuck out, one word that most weren’t used to hearing in the shul’s sanctuary: Allah. “Oh, Allah, increase my light everywhere. … Oh, Allah, Oh, Allah.” TBH Senior Rabbi Sarah Hronsky — flanked by overhead screens projecting Zonneveld’s lyrics — suggested that congregants, if they...
Muslims in Brazil
Muhammad Mumtaz Brazil, a country of 200 million people, is well known for its leading economy in the world. It is famed for its diversity in culture, people, faith, religions and much more. The constitution of Brazil adopted a secular government system, where people are free to choose and practice their religions. There is no official religion in Brazil; majority of Brazilian follow Roman Catholicism. Various other religions, including Islam, are also practiced in the country. Islam is one of the earliest religions in Brazil. It is believed that the earliest significant Muslim presence was the result of African slaves in the 16th century. In the 19th century, a large number of immigrants traveled to Brazil from the...
Islamic Scholars Call for Access to Vaccinate Children
Amman, Feb.27 (Petra) – Protection against diseases is obligatory and admissible under the Islamic Shariah, and that any actions which do not support these preventive measures and cause harm to humanity are un-Islamic, Islamic scholars said Thursday. During the first meeting of the Global Islamic Advisory Group for polio eradication, religious leaders denounced violence against health workers involved in polio vaccination campaigns, saying that such violence caused lasting harm to children and communities. The scholars led by the Grand Imam of the Holy Mosque of Mecca, adopted a strong “Jeddah Declaration” and a focused six-month Action Plan to address critical challenges facing polio eradication efforts in the few remaining polio-endemic parts of the Islamic world: a ban on...
Muslims Share Same Sentiments with Catholics on Assisted Suicide
TORONTO – There’s about one million Canadians who know suicide is wrong, assisted suicide turns doctors into murderers, the state has an obligation to protect life until natural death and that not everything in medicine depends on the freely chosen wishes of the patient. These people are not Catholic. They’re Muslim. Striking similarities between Catholic and Muslim bioethics were on show at a Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute lecture by Dr. Shabbir Alibhai at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College March 5. Alibhai practises geriatric and family medicine within Toronto’s University Health Network, but he’s also a cancer researcher and published bioethicist. There are differences with Catholic bioethics, often in approach or emphasis, but on end-of-life issues Islamic scholars...
First Islamic Museum in Australia Launches in Melbourne
MELBOURNE // A delegation from the UAE Government was on hand in Melbourne for the opening of Australia’s first Islamic museum on Friday. The evening marked the end of a four-year journey to build the museum by founders Moustafa and Maysaa Fahour, an Australian couple living in Dubai. The A$10 million (Dh32.8m) Islamic Museum of Australia in the suburb of Thornbury was declared open by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey. Also in attendance was Bader Al Hilali from the office of Ali Al Hashimi, the religious and judicial adviser at the Ministry of Presidential Affairs. “The support that we have tonight is phenomenal,” said Mr Fahour. “I heard a comment today where someone said that we as Australian Muslims...
Gardening: An Islamic Philosophical Architecture
If heaven, the ultimate reward that we are striving for, is described as “gardens underneath which rivers flow”, then what places on Earth could give us better foretaste of Paradise than gardens? Gardens, and specifically traditional Islamic gardens, are the reflections of heaven on Earth. But they are also much more: they are the places where our minds can rest and our souls can reconnect with nature; they are the places of respite in the cooling shadow of trees and representations of ultimate timeless beauty. They provide nutrition for our souls, but on a more basic level, gardens also provide us with fruit and vegetables to feed our bodies. Gardens have profound meaning in Islam on both symbolic...
London Jews Host Islam Awareness Week
LONDON – Joining hands to help poor and needy, a London Jewish group announced plans to host Islam awareness week to showcase some of the social action projects taking place across the country. “It seemed appropriate to use JW3 as a venue to launch Islam Awareness Week this year,” Julie Siddiqui, executive director of Islamic Society of Britain, told Jewish News on Wednesday, February 19. “The Jewish community have done a brilliant job at putting faith into real action with projects that really help others who need it.” Culminating on years of positive cooperation between the two faiths, this year’s Islam Awareness week will revisit the most important achievements in offering help to the community. Siddiqui – who...
Haitians Find ‘Peace, Guidance’ in Islam
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Schoolteacher Darlene Derosier lost her home in the 2010 earthquake that devastated her country. Her husband died a month later after suffering what she said was emotional trauma from the quake. She and her two daughters now live in tents outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by thousands of others made homeless and desperate by the disaster. What’s helped pull her through all the grief, she said, has been her faith, but not of the Catholic, Protestant or even Voodoo variety that have predominated in this island country. Instead, she’s converted to a new religion here, Islam, and built a small neighbourhood mosque out of cinderblocks and plywood, where some 60 Muslims pray daily. Islam...
Former Gitmo Guard Now Proselytizes for Islam
(POCATELLO, ID) – A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard shared his experiences with a small group of Pocatello residents Sunday night. Terry Holdbrooks lectures against American foreign policy at various venues around the country. Holdbrooks, who converted to Islam after supervising detainees, says Guantanamo needs to be closed, citing concerns about due process and the possibility of innocent people being kept behind bars. About 160 detainees are still held at the prison. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated one in four detainees released will eventually return to terrorist and insurgent...
China’s Female Imams Carrying on Ancient Islamic Tradition
China isn’t the heartland of Islam, but it is the only country in the world to have a long history of female imams. A small group of women in central China’s Henan province have been imams in their community for centuries. This part of China is home to less than four per cent of China’s roughly 23 million Muslims. The believers are from an ethnic minority known as the Hui. A group of Muslim grandmothers wander into a mosque behind an ancient city wall shortly before noon prayers on a Friday. A crowd of 50 soon fill the prayer room. Ge Caixia is their religious leader, a female imam in the mosque that’s dedicated only to women. She...
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