Year: 2013

Books

An American Muslim University | The Revealer

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An American Muslim University | The Revealer. I first met Scott Korb in the summer of 2010. It was at a time in New York when the Islamophobia Industry was holding a fundraising drive by saying that building houses of worship and praying was un-American; saying they were vultures retraumatizing the city for their own personal gain and amusement would be too charitable. I was doing a lot of press at that time around Park51, and I get an email from Korb. He wants to do a piece on American Muslims. I am wary. There are all sorts of media…

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Media Appearances

Should You Social Media Fast During Ramadan?

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Should You Social Media Fast During Ramadan?. Islamic scholar Hussein Rashid, on the other hand, has been going the exact opposite route when it comes to the holy month and social media since 2009. Over the last three Ramadans, Rashid estimated that he has tweeted between 35 and 40 percent of the Quran to his 3,000 followers.  “I can definitely see the argument that you want to abstain from things that engage you too much, that are a distraction from your spiritual life,” Rashid said. “I guess my approach is that these are things that are part of my daily…

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Intra-faith Religion Web/Tech

Tweeting the #Quran 2013/1434 #ttQuran

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Ramadan is back and it snuck up on me this year. It has already started for some folk. Time to talk about tweeting the Qur'an again. Previous years' thoughts and rules: Traditionally, Muslims read the Qur'an in its entirety over this time, in a section a day. The Qur'an is split into thirty sections, called juz', and one section is read each night. This year, I have been thinking it would be fun to tweet the Qur'an for Ramadan. Coincidentally, Shavuot came, and several people I follow on Twitter tweeted the Torah. Since that experience seemed to be successful, it further cemented my…

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Media

New CNN Piece: What Tsarnaev gets wrong about Islam – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs

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My Take: What Tsarnaev gets wrong about Islam – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bomb suspects, reportedly wrote that “an attack against one Muslim is an attack against all” on the wall of the boat in which he was hiding from police last month. Variations of this refrain seem to be common among angry young Muslim men, especially those who are attracted to violence. However, such a view ignores history, religious thinking and contemporary reality. It should be seen as a crass advertising slogan rather than a declaration of belief.

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Uncategorized

CNN Op-Ed on Boston Bombings

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Opinion: After 9/11, reaction to Muslim Americans more nuanced However, whatever we learn about them does not tell us why they did what they did – only parts of who they are. It is easy, in the initial aftermath of the bombings, to make careless associations between identity and motive, similar to post 9/11 reaction. But this time, there is a change in rhetoric of how  potential suspects are identified, particularly if they are Muslim. It is because of this change we are learning to move past paralyzing fear and maturing in how we think of what it means to be…

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Current Affairs

I’d Rather Go Back to Yemen than Face NYPD | Religion Dispatches

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I’d Rather Go Back to Yemen than Face NYPD | Religion Dispatches. A coalition of civil rights organizations just released “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims” which pulls together what we know of the NYPD surveillance of Muslim communities throughout the Northeast, places the surveillance in a legal context, and more importantly, interviews Muslims to understand the real world impact of the surveillance.

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Media Appearances

‘Mapping Muslims’ – New Report Reveals Devestating Effects NYPD Surveillance has on Muslim Community

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‘Mapping Muslims’ – New Report Reveals Devestating Effects NYPD Surveillance has on Muslim Community. By the end of last February, after Patheos first covered the breakdown of trust between the NYPD and the area Muslim community, the trust deficit grew even deeper when a series of ongoing articles from the Associated Press exposed wide-reaching domestic surveillance programs set up for the NYPD by the CIA. The last straw came with the report that the NYPD had been conducting secret surveillance on Muslim Student Associations at 16 colleges across New York and northeastern United States.  Click here to see how several…

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