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...
Poll: Most Americans Say Islam is Peaceful...
By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times – Wednesday, February 4, 2015 Iowa caucus-goers taking part in a poll said Islam, by and large, is a peaceful religion — and that finding has some Muslims shocked, particularly with Republicans. The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll showed that 53 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats think Islam is a peaceful religion — and only 39 percent of GOPers and 13 percent of Democrats see it is as inherently violent. Basim Bakri, 54, who moved from Jordan to Iowa 30 years ago, said he’s surprised especially that so few Republicans labeled the Muslim faith as violent because so many in the party seem to have a...
Islam, As Truly Found in the Qur’an...
Vice President Joe Biden spoke truth to power at last week’s White House conference on fighting violent extremism when he said that we have no military means with which to wage and win such a struggle of conflicting ideals. At the same time, President Obama has asked the Congress for war powers with which to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. He wants to use more U.S. military force against a religious movement of Sunni Muslims. This is not the right way to end this conflict. Military force is a very limited instrument that comes with inherent shortcomings, as we have learned after years of inconclusive fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I learned this fighting...
Claiming ISIS is Islam Like Claiming the KKK Represents Christianity...
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has likened comparisons of Isis representing Islam as no different to describing the Ku Klux Klan as “Christian knights”. The retired NBA star, who converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam at university, appeared on US V show Morning Joe on Monday. Asked by host Mika Brzezinski what he thought really drove the militant group, he said: “It’s a play for money and power, and these people try to impose their will on people so people will listen to them, and they can be in charge. That’s all it’s about. They’ve taken on a fascist attitude and a fascist approach to everything. You do what we say or you die.” “You can make parallels to things that...
Norway’s Muslims Form Protective Human Ring Around Oslo’s Synagogue...
OSLO, Feb 21 (Reuters) – More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo’s synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend. Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” Norway’s Muslims formed what they called a ring of peace a week after Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen last weekend. “Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the protest’s organizers told a crowd of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Norwegians who filled the small street around Oslo’s only...
For India’s Largest Jewish Community, One Muslim Makes All the Tombstones...
Even though the Jewish population in Mumbai has declined dramatically over the past several decades—from a peak of 30,000 in the late 1940s to some 3,500 today, due in large part to mass aliyah—it is still the largest Jewish community in India. But for decades there was only one person in Mumbai, and the entire state of Maharashtra of which Mumbai is a part, who engraved Jewish tombstones: a devout Muslim named Muhammad Abdul Yassin. On a recent visit, I found Yassin sitting in his cement hut on the southern end of Mumbai’s Jewish cemetery, surrounded by smooth marble and granite slabs—soon to be used for headstones—and the tools of his trade, hammers and chisels of various sizes....
Quick Links
