Intra-faith Religion Web/Tech

Tweeting the #Quran 2013/1434 #ttQuran

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…

Read More
Media

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

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.

Read More
Uncategorized

CNN Op-Ed on Boston Bombings

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…

Read More
Current Affairs

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

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.

Read More
Media Appearances

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

‘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…

Read More
Art

NYC Event: Agora Gallery – Fahim Somani – Exhibition Announcement

Agora Gallery – Fahim Somani – Exhibition Announcement. Pakistani-American, Houston-based artist Fahim Somani creates expressionistic, calligraphy-inflected compositions which are not only exquisite formal experiments full of delightful painterly flourishes, but aesthetic bridges between two cultures. While drawing on the text of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, Somani incorporates elements that evoke Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and other currents in post-war American art. The artist achieves this marriage of visual cues from Islamic and American art with innate talent, producing powerful and enigmatic images full of brilliant brushstrokes and vibrant textures.

Read More
Video

Hussein Rashid on the High Price of Islamophobia | Odyssey Networks

Hussein Rashid on the High Price of Islamophobia | Odyssey Networks. Islamophobia is alive in America, and Hussein Rashid sees it playing out among Sikhs, often mistaken for Muslims. In the most recent example, a member of her own party mistook a Californian GOP candidate, who is Sikh, for being a Muslim. “The reality is that Islamophobia has very real consequences and more and more victims of Islamophobia and Islamophobic rhetoric tend to be non-Muslims,” Rashid said.

Read More