The new face of Muslim American leadership by Hussein Rashid – Common Ground News Service

I like Eboo a lot. I think he’s actually behind the curve on this one though; the Muslim-American community is well on the path he describes. Doesn’t mean that he doesn’t say it well. The Faith Divide: The future of Islam in America – On Faith at washingtonpost.com. Big tent Islam means that Muslims from a range of geographies, ethnicities, theologies and intensities all consider themselves part of a single community whose similarities outweigh their differences. It means Sunnis and Shias, sufis and salafis, African-American converts and Arab immigrants, five-times-a-day-prayers and once-a-year-mosque-goers have two words for each other: fellow Muslim.

L.I.-Bred Muslim Convert Challenges Stereotypes – NYTimes.com. Peter Casey, or AbdulMalik as he is known online, often rides a skateboard to the mosque and rarely thinks twice about performing his prostrations at a Starbucks. Mr. Casey, a 23-year-old recent Queens College graduate, does not do it out of a rebellious impulse to defy Muslim orthodoxy. Rather, he says he seeks to “challenge stereotypes and misconceptions” others have about his faith.  As a convert to Islam with a suburban upbringing and a Judeo-Christian background, Mr. Casey is in a rare position to do so. His boyish looks, clear blue eyes and…

Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam. But Sarachev’s forebears didn’t practice Islam the way he understands it today. Over a millennium, Tatars had developed a rich and complicated theology, comfortable with rational thought and mindful of the need to coexist with the Christian Russians. In Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, the religious establishment endeavors to carry on that tradition today. But Soviet hostility to religion left most Tatars with only a perfunctory sense of their own Muslim inheritance. Growing up, Sarachev remembers, religion meant grandparents and holidays, and little else. Yet even then, just after the collapse of…