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...
Struggling Church to Reopen as a Mosque
A CATHOLIC church that struggled to survive amid dwindling attendance numbers has been sold – to a muslim community group. St Peter’s, on Waterloo Road, Cobridge, dates back to the 1930s and there has been a Christian church on the site since the late eighteenth century. But the church was hit by a sharp decline in attendances, and finally closed in July last year. Now the Archdiocese of Birmingham, the body responsible for the church, has sold it to the Medina Mosque community group, who are currently operating out of two terraced houses on the same road. A spokesman for the archdiocese said: “The parish of Cobridge has a long history, but in recent times the number of...
Halal Products Exports Growth on Uptrend in Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR: The government expects the growth of Malaysia’s halal export to increase in line with the country’s total trade expansion which is projected at three per cent this year. International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said up to June this year, Malaysia had exported halal products worth RM15.7 billion. “Out of this figure, 14.4 per cent or RM1.6 billion was contributed by halal certified Bumiputera companies,” he said to reporters after witnessing the signing of a memorandum of collaborative arrangement between Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC), SME Bank and Bumiputera Agenda Steering Unit (Teraju) here yesterday. Mustapa said based on export statistics, Malaysia was the biggest halal product exporter among the countries in the...
Can Islamic Finance Feed a Sustainable Economic System?
Is your mortgage halal? How about your pension? Islamic finance has been a significant global force for the past few decades, but in recent years sharia-compliant saving and investing have become more common in the United States. For example, in June, Goldman Sachs provided a loan to Arcapita Bank, an Islamic investment company, that in compliance with sharia law did not charge interest. In July, a US-based trade association, the World Council of Credit Unions, published a manual explaining to would-be community financiers in developing countries how to operate sharia-compliant credit unions. Western discussions of sharia law often focus on extremist groups imposing brutal interpretations of these legal codes on unwilling populations. But sharia law, which derives from the Qur’an and the religious teaching...
“Mr. Bean” Actor Rowan Atkinson Converted to Islam
The world-famous British comedian Rowan Atkinson, who is the creator of an amazing figure of Mr. Bean, has converted to Islam. On Tuesday, October, 1 the leader of the ruling party in Tunisia “Al-Nahda” (“Revival”) Rachid Ghannouchi congratulated with this event the English actor. The head wished a new Muslim “resistance in this thorny path”. It is worth mentioning that Mr. Atkinson and the party leader has long-standing relationships: men often communicated during Ghannouchi’s stay in London’s exile. For example, the article in “Wikipedia” names the date of Mr Bean’s conversion to Islam the 1st October 2013. At the same time, Rowan Atkinson says that the interest of the Muslim religion awoke after the appearance of...
Bill Gates Applauds Khan Academy’s Ingenuity
Weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Gates applauded the educational efforts of Salman Khan in front of a 2,000-man audience. Khan, the only teacher of the online Khan Academy, produces videos and tutorials that have made his website one of the most popular educational sites on the internet. Khan’s ten to fifteen minute free tutorials, on subjects including math and science, are now viewed almost 70,000 times a day. Commenting on the tutorials, which both Gates and his 11-year old son Rory consume, the second richest man in the world says, “I’d say we moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged way category. It was a good day his wife...
Actress Liz Anjorin Converts To Islam, Changes Name To Aisha
The actress has obviously paid her dues in the industry and she’s making waves one of which was the success of the shooting of her forthcoming thriller entitled “Kofo De First Lady.” The Badagry Lagos State-born mother of one is said to have traveled to India, Morocco, Cameroon and other neighboring countries to shop for her newly re-branded fashion out fit called Pick Me Reloaded, at Ogba, Lagos. Lizzy who is said to have traveled to Mecca this year has joined the list of Nigerian celebrities who have visited the holy land....
UK Study: Muslim Students More Tolerant Than Non-Muslims
“The Burnley Project: Evaluating the Contribution of Interfaith Dialogue to Community Cohesion” is a Home Office-funded study (August 2005 – July 2007) conducted by Lancaster University’s Department of Religious Studies, with a research team headed by Dr. Alan Billings and Dr. Andrew Holden. The study is funded in the wake of the Burnley riots. In contradiction to reports of Muslim youth being vulnerable to terrorist recruitment tactics, the Burnley Project, whose findings are to be published in April 2007 suggests that Muslim pupils in Lancashire are more moderate, forbearing, and tolerant than their white counterparts. In contradiction to reports of Muslim youth being vulnerable to terrorist recruitment tactics, the Burnley Project, whose findings are to be published this year, suggests that...
Muslim Students Help Stock Food Pantry at Episcopal Church
Nameera Perwez picked up on her lesson fast, and she was eager to put it in action. This is the season for sacrifice in the Muslim community, and the fifth-grader from the Iqra Academy of Virginia had something in mind she wanted to share: food. For more than an hour Friday, she and 10 classmates from the small Muslim primary school in South Richmond were at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church helping sort canned goods and other nonperishable items they’d just donated to the community food pantry. “Other people need your help, and you need to help them,” Nameera said as she and classmate Fatin Salman prepared paper grocery bags. “You can’t be greedy. You need to help them.”...
Arnoud van Doorn to Produce Pro-Islam Film
Arnoud van Doorn, a former member of the Dutch right-wing Freedom Party and producer of anti-Islam and blasphemous movie ‘Fitna’, has performed Haj this year after converting to Islam. He also plans to produce a pro-Islam film on the teachings of holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the Saudi Arabia daily Okaz reported. After arriving in the holy city of Makkah, he said now he was living as one of the most pleasant persons, and he will produce another film about the morals of the Holy Prophet. Van Doorn said he found in Islam what he was yearning for and what he had missed in his former life (before converting to Islam). He said he came to...
Jewish Filmmaker to Head Philadelphia Chapter of CAIR
A national Muslim civil-rights organization has named a Jewish filmmaker as executive director of its Philadelphia chapter. In introducing himself online, Jacob Bender writes “Asalaam Alaykum!” (“peace be upon you” in Arabic), quotes the Quran, and states he brings “a decades-long commitment to promoting peace and justice between Abraham’s Children (Abna’ Ibrahim) and a long resume of professional accomplishments.” In announcing the appointment, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) referred to Bender, its highest ranking non-Muslim, as “a bridge builder between the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities,” noting that, “in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, Mr. Bender undertook a series of outreach initiatives to the Muslim community, both in the U.S. and abroad....
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