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...
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....
MuslimGirl Founder Says Islam Is Feminist
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)–At only 22 years old, Amani al-Khatahtbeh is the editor in chief of her own online publication, MuslimGirl.net. The magazine “was launched from the bedroom of a high school girl that was fed up with the misleading misconceptions surrounding Islam,” reads the website. A New Jersey native, al-Khatahtbeh now lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a media relations specialist at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. She describes herself as “a human and civil rights activist and public speaker.” Her areas of focus include media, race, gender and politics. This interview, for Women’s History Month, is part of a series that taps activists from the 1960s through today to showcase the diversity of those involved. It was...
Bacon Linked to Heart Failure & Diabetes
A new Harvard study that found no increased risk of heart disease among meat eaters is generating a lot of buzz for red meat. “A Guilt-Free Hamburger,” reads one headline. “Order the Steak,” begins another. But the research, published this week in the journal Circulation, is not so much a celebration of red meat as it is an indictment of processed meats like bacon, sausage and deli meats. Eating one serving of those foods a day was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and 19 percent increased risk of diabetes. But there was no increase in risk associated with eating unprocessed red meat. The findings come from a broad analysis of several studies tracking...
Eating Bacon Can Harm a Man’s Fertility
Men who eat just one rasher of bacon a day could be reducing their chances of becoming fathers. Half a portion of processed meat such as a rasher or a small sausage can significantly harm sperm quality, scientists believe. Those who want to boost the odds of having a child should eat fish instead – with species such as cod or halibut appearing to have a particularly dramatic effect on fertility. The findings add to the growing evidence that a couple’s chances of having children is strongly governed by their lifestyle – with smoking, alcohol and stress having a detrimental effect and exercise and diet enhancing it. Experts are still unclear why certain foods can harm or promote...
Jews, Muslims Unite for Peaceful Cause
They held hands. They shared a meal. They laughed and joked. And for a few hours Sunday in Nashville, more than 200 members of the Temple Congregation Ohabai Sholom and members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro shed the perception that Jews and Muslims — locked in decades of bitter strife — can only be enemies. Yet it was outrage that drew the groups together. After hearing the heated public opposition to the Murfreesboro mosque, Temple Rabbi Mark Schiftan reached out to ICM Imam Ossama Bahloul and organized a trip late last year to see the mosque and learn more about Islam. On Sunday, Bahloul and three busloads of ICM members returned the favor, giving Schiftan and Bahloul...
Muslims Help Repair Buddhist Temple Damaged By Volcano
CENTRAL JAVA – Dozens of Muslim students in Central Java’s Magelang have participated in cleaning the world’s largest Buddhist temple that had been distorted with volcanic ash earlier this month. “Around 50 students from our boarding school spent their Friday holiday to clean Borobodur Temple of the Keluds ash together with other volunteers,” Muhammad Dimyadi, a teacher from the boarding school, told Republika Online on Saturday, February 22. Muslim students from the Mistakhurrohman Islamic boarding school have joined hands with hundreds volunteers who came to clean Borobudur Temple. Students’ effort was part of a voluntary campaign to remove the volcanic ash caused by the eruption of Mount Kelud on February 13, promoting authorities to close the temple and...
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