Quoted in HuffPo Religion Video on Islam

Aziz Ansari has a funny suggestion to end Islamophobia. Here’s why it’s important. – The Washington Post. The azan is meant to remind the listener of God’s majesty. Revealed to prophet Muhammad, it puts the believer in a state of awe and humility. For every claim that we may understand God, we are reminded that God is greater than anything we may conceive. That moment of being lost in the transcendence of God, in the tradition of prophet Muhammad, is an ecstatic one. It is not about bells or dancing. It is about exercising the gifts God has created in…

‘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…

ISIS vs. mainstream Muslims: The media battle – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs. Quoting Islam’s holiest text to make that point was smart, said Hussein Rashid, a religion scholar at Hofstra University in New York. “ISIS violates every single tenet of this verse, so Barfi shows them to be ignorant,” he said.  “By using the Quran as the basis for debate he also demonstrates that ISIS does not actually base themselves in Muslim traditions, but in the language of hatred and rage.”  Likewise, Barfi’s use of the phrase “debate with calm preachings” rings a particular note in Islam, Muslim scholars said.  It recalls…