Media Literacy and the Middle East – Primary Source Podcast

For Muslim Americans, A Decade Of Increasing Outreach | The Jewish Week. At the same time, Muslim Americans “are moving away from a single issue — what’s good for the Muslims — to what’s good for the communities in which they live,” said Hussein Rashid, an adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University.  They’ve become more and more involved in issues that affect the entire community, such as education, health, law enforcement and sanitation, said Rashid. Those, in turn, have led to greater contact and, in some cases, more friendships between Muslim Americans and others.

Why it’s absurd that a Muslim leader’s presence at the Washington National Cathedral is controversial – The Washington Post. The adhan, or call to prayer, is an important aspect of Muslim devotional life. It can be prayerful, but it is not part of a formal prayer. To suggest that Magid is praying, presumably for the success of Trump, is mistaken. When Magid calls out “I bear witness that there is no deity but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,” there is no benediction for anyone. There is only the praise of the divine. By framing it simply as…

The Power of Names – Sacred Matters Magazine. In many popular media reports, the default often seems to be Sunni Islam. It is unclear why this has become the baseline for what Islam is. Some academics have suggested, going back to the origins of the discipline of Religion, that Sunni Islam most closely resembled Protestant Christianity, which was constructed as the truest of religious groupings. As a result, structures that mirrored Protestant Christianity were elevated to true expressions of those traditions. Perhaps it has to do with the tyranny of the majority, so that by virtue of being the most…