New Age Islam

A Journey From Islam to Same-Sex Marriage – NYTimes.com. Ms. Khan, a Puerto Rican grandmother from Brooklyn, married her longtime girlfriend, Mersedita Sanchez, 45, on Sunday. The moment had particular resonance, Ms. Khan said, as she had converted to Islam more than 20 years ago after marrying a Pakistani man, and had been wearing a hijab and praying several times a day.

Updated call from the original, incorrect one I had posted earlier: Dear Concerned Muslim American Community Member: As Salaamu Alaykum. In February of this year, a new Bollywood film, My Name is Khan, opened in U.S. theaters. Although it is claimed that the film promotes tolerance and understanding, My Name is Khan presents our diverse and dynamic American Muslim community through a “Good Muslim/Bad Muslim” lens that does an injustice to our community and reproduces racist stereotypes about African Americans. For a cogent review of the film, please read Su’ad Abdul Khabeer’s article “Khan Breaks New Stereotypes (but Reinforces Old…

Toward a More Inclusive Islam | Religion Dispatches. The report, called (Re)Presenting American Muslims: Broadening the Conversation, seeks to move beyond inclusion as simply referring to sexual orientation. Instead, it aims to revive a broader ethos of pluralism and cosmopolitanism, grounded in Muslim traditions, that has historically been the hallmark of healthy, thriving Muslim societies. In many ways, it sets the stage for and goes beyond the open letter to American Muslims published by Reza Aslan and Hassan Minhaj here on RD.