Category: Intra-faith

BBC News – John Mohammed Butt: The hippy who became an imam. But this promotion of peaceful Islam by the English former hippy has set him on a collision course with militants. His beloved Pakistan has now become too unsafe for him.

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…

My Wish for 2011: A Better World for My Daughter. Now that I’m expecting my first child, my prayers for the state of the country have gotten more urgent. Yes, I think good thoughts for the America of tomorrow. The idea of bringing into the world a little girl who will be Muslim and Arab and American makes me anxious about the future. When I dream now, it’s for her and for the world I hope she will grow up in.

Mecca Development Veers to Kitsch – Critic’s Notebook – NYTimes.com. It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and…

Kim Joseph: Unveiling My Surrender. Throughout the day I was feeling a growing need to reach up and rip off my hijab. Just like that. Take it off and continue with my day. This was not a new thought but an uprising personal realization that had been on my mind for weeks. Because of this, I began wearing my hijab wrapped up and tied in various fashions at the nape of my neck. This simple change felt amazing, and I hadn’t even realized I felt un-amazing. I was standing at the innermost part of the aisle, as alone as I…

Given by a female writer friend to a male friend, both of whom wish to remain anonymous: A little lingering eye contact (ended when you carefully look away, as though remembering that you are in fact a dutiful Muslim brother even though you contain deep uncharted oceans of complexity and longing, a fact of which she will be thoroughly appraised by said lingering eye contact) should do it. humor, humor

Thanks to the Faith in Public Life team for doing some basic math and punching another hole is stupid Muslim “facts” articles. Faith in Public Life :: Bold Faith Type. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor last week, national security “expert” Joseph Bosco made the tired argument that moderate Muslims are failing to prevent terrorism.

Welcome to Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa’s Official Website ::….. – Ramadan: A Time To Give. I replied that zakat was spoken of in metaphorical terms and many believe, as I do, that the payment of zakat can go beyond camels and money to the most valuable asset of all: time.

Fatima’s Blue Eyes – Haiku « alBostoni. High 5 mashallah, Bicultural synthesis, Fatima’s blue eyes.