Canada: Raising the Veil on Harper’s Bill
Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made one of his first priorities in the fall sitting of Parliament a bill to force voters to show their faces at the polls. But there is not one shred […]
PA: Muslims, Jews Form Post-9/11 Friendships
On a Sunday afternoon in late September, an unusual group of people got together in a Point Breeze house. Half of them were Muslims, who, in the midst of Ramadan, talked about their beliefs and practices around the holy period. The other half were Jews, who talked about the meaning and rituals of the recently […]
CAIR-CA: Local Pakistanis Watch Situation in Homeland
Lodi Pakistanis are closely watching news from their home country as protests over a presidential power grab in the south Asian nation have led to hundreds of arrests.“They are monitoring the situation very closely,” Lodi Muslim Mosque President Mohmmed Shoaib said.At the Pak-India grocery store on Oak Street, worker Mumtaz Khan displayed newspapers in the […]
Imam: Militants Distort True Nature of Islam
Violence in the name of Islam could be stopped peacefully — through education, a Muslim leader said in Chico last week. The solution is for all Muslims to learn the truth about Islam — that its guiding ethic is the Golden Rule, Mamadou Toure said in an interview Friday. Toure, who comes from Senegal, in […]
KY: University Hosts Muslim Peace-Building Trip
The University of Louisville is playing host to 14 Asian Muslim scholars and activists on a three-week trip designed to launch projects that will build bridges between the United States and predominantly Muslim nations. The program, “Religion and Society: A Dialogue,” follows two previous exchanges between Americans and Asian Muslims hosted by U of L. […]
‘Islamic Finance’ Offers Innovative Investment Tools
Last month, two economists published a working paper suggesting an unusual way to diversify one’s investment portfolio: buy something called sukuk, or bonds that conform to the demands of Islam. The Koran, most Islamic scholars agree, forbids the charging of interest, so traditional bonds are off-limits to devout Muslims. But sukuk generate a steady income […]
CA: Health Trumps Faith Differences at Muslim Clinic
It grew out of the 1992 riots, a vision by a small group of Muslim medical students to bring charitable, high-quality healthcare to the needy residents of South Los Angeles. Eleven years later, the UMMA clinic on Florence Avenue has served nearly 20,000 patients, the great majority of them non-Muslim. It has become a mainstay […]
FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists
Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with […]
MO: Bias Against Muslims Prompts Hate Crime Awareness Event
Discrimination against Muslim students prompted Farah Naz to organize an event to bring together student groups and raise awareness about hate crime incidents on campus. “As bad as it sounds, it happens to a lot of people,” said Naz, a member of the Muslim Student Organization. The event, held Friday afternoon in Memorial Union on […]
MA: Writing the Book on Islam in America
During the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars played a key role in the development of the encyclopedia, attempting to pool all knowledge in one accessible place. Among others, the Brethren of Purity, a group of scholars in what is modern Iraq, compiled an encyclopedia of Greek and Arabic learning in the 900s. Over the past two […]