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...
Targeted Islamic Outreach to Hispanics Achieving Results
PEARLAND, Texas • Carlos Lopez works in the United States to earn money and send it back home to his family in Mexico. But he sends back something else, too: pamphlets and personal testimonies about his new faith. On Dec. 22, 2013, Lopez took the “shahada” — the profession of the Islamic faith — and joined the ranks of what the American Muslim Council estimates is a 200,000 strong Hispanic Muslim community across the U.S. Unlike previous generations of Hispanic Muslims who were attracted to the faith by their own spiritual explorations, Lopez and many others like him are converting as a result of targeted Islamic outreach efforts. This new form of Islamic “da’wah,” or outreach, aims to...
Iraqi Cleric: Suicide Operations Tarnish Islam
A prominent Iraqi cleric on Thursday (March 20th) slammed those who promote suicide operations and claim they are “jihad” and self-sacrifice, saying they tarnish Islam and are not in any way connected to religion. A picture of a boy who “blew himself up in western Ramadi” in a group of people was posted to the Twitter account “Rashidun Caliphate”, which bears the black flag of al-Qaeda, on Sunday. “Al-Qaeda’s posting of a picture of a child younger than 12 years old who was wearing an explosives vest is a criminal, heinous act unacceptable according to any belief, monotheistic religion or any ideology,” said Anbar Iftaa Council member Sheikh Nasser Khalil al-Dulaimi. “Suicide operations carried out by al-Qaeda or...
I Wish All Americans Received the Message of Islam
Diane Charles Breslin is an ex-Catholic Christian living in US. She lost faith after reading the Bible but her continued belief in God led her to explore other religions including Buddhism and Hinduism. In this concluding part of her series, Breslin recounts her Irish Catholic background and says it was only by instinct that she always would pray to God — the One and Only — before going to sleep. It took three full years of my searching and studying Qur’an before I was ready to proclaim that I wanted to be a Muslim. Of course I feared the changes in clothing and habits, such as dating and drinking to which I had become accustomed. Music and dancing...
Daughters in Islam
Allah Almighty says (what means): “To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; He creates what He wills. He gives to whom He wills female [children], and He gives to whom He wills males. Or He makes them [both] males and females, and He renders whom He wills barren. Indeed, He is Knowing and Competent.” [Qur’an 49:50] Allah is the One, based on His ultimate wisdom, who grants whomever He wills sons and daughters; He grants sons only to whomever He wills, and grants daughters only to whomever He wills, and if He so wills, He makes whomever He wills infertile. We notice in the above verse that the mention of daughters preceded that of...
Islam Is Ireland’s Fastest Growing Religion
The Republic of Ireland may be intimately associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but the fastest-growing faith on the emerald isle is Islam — at such a rapid rate that Muslims are projected to replace Protestantism as the second-most popular religion by the year 2043. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that between 1991 and 2011, the percentage of Irish residents who were Muslim jumped from 0.1 percent to 1 percent (equating to about 49,000 people). By 2020, Ireland’s Islamic population will more than double to at least 100,000. The increase is attributed to both immigration and population growth. The second fastest-growing faith in Ireland is Orthodox Christianity, largely due to immigration from Eastern Europe — doubling in just...
Women in Early Islam
The fact that the marginalisation of women in many Arab societies has no religious background can come as a surprise to many, discovers Farah El-Akkad Judge, minister, scholar and scientist were just some of the professions engaged in by women during the early age of Islam. Yet, today some women are still not aware of the freedom Islam has given them, and for some it comes as a surprise to learn that the contemporary marginalisation of women has no background in religion. 29-year-old pharmacist Hoda Gamal believes Islam has developed through the years and that today’s world is very different from the early days of Islam. It is for this reason that today women should focus on their...
Islam, the American way
Listening to immigration attorney Muna Jondy talk about growing up in Flint, Mich., it’s easy to imagine her as a teenager, eyes ablaze, hands on hips, confronting her Syrian-born parents with her all-American attitude. A petite woman with a strong, expressive face, she sits cross-legged on her couch and leans forward to recount the day, at age 13, that she wanted to go to the movies with a friend. Ms. Jondy says her mother, a devout Muslim, responded “like I had asked to snort cocaine.” She was incredulous, and Jondy recalls her asking: “Did you just ask that? Did you just say that out loud?” Jondy had already started to cover her hair with a head scarf...
Study: Wearing Hijab Helps Body Confidence
The research, conducted by Dr Viren Swami from the University of Westminster and colleagues looked at body image issues amongst British Muslim women. Dr Swami explained: “In the West anxiety about body image, for women, is so prevalent it’s considered normal. This study aimed to explore how these attitudes differ within a British Muslim community.” A total of 587 Muslim women aged from 18 to 70 years from London participated in a number of tests. From this group 218 women stated they never used the hijab and 369 women said they used some form of the hijab at least now and then. Participants undertook a number of questionnaires that asked them to rate their own feelings of body...
Pope Encourages Dialogue and Mutual Respect with our Muslim Brothers
Muslims are “our brothers” and Christians must cultivate “mutual respect” with them. These were the words of Pope Francis yesterday during the Angelus, a message which could signal a turnaround in the relationship between the Catholic Church and Islam. This changing tide can even be seen in the words used in addressing Muslims. This is the first Pope to have referred to Muslims in such direct and explicit terms as “our brothers”. This would have been practically unthinkable even up until the recent past. During the Angelus, the pontiff made reference to the message sent to Muslims to mark the end of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr feast, which was published on 2 August, which he asked to...
Dallas Mosque Feeds the Hungry at a ‘Day of Dignity’
Not even the recent furlough of federal workers was enough to snuff out the latest community outreach effort of Masjid al Islam mosque in Dallas. On a weekend in early October, the mosque was participating in a national initiative known as the Day of Dignity, an annual event during which mosques feed, clothe, and equip people living in poverty. But federal workers who had been scheduled to attend to speak about the details of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) healthcare legislation had been forced to cancel because of a partial federal government shutdown. It was a blow to the mosque’s boosters, says Muhammad Abdul-Jami, treasurer of Masjid al Islam and coordinator of the Day of Dignity event. But...
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