By Yusra Gomaa “H-H-Hello, Asalaamu’alaykum. Umm, my name is Amna and I have two young children. The state is terminating my parental rights, and there’s nothing I can do. I didn’t know who else to call. I have one month to find someone before they go up for adoption. Can you please help me find a Muslim to adopt my children?” The mosque director began a three-week campaign in Tennessee to find Muslims both willing and qualified to adopt these... Read more
By Saud Inam For more than a decade the Muslim community has been in a struggle to overcome negative media, misconceptions and misunderstandings about Islam and Muslims. Our approach largely has been reactive and not proactive. But, the problem with being reactive is the Muslim community has let the Islamophobes and religious extremists dictate the narrative. We unfortunately responds and reacts. As my mentor, Imam Mohamed Magid said, “Instead of being firefighters, we need to start building fire-resistant homes.” This analogy... Read more
Editorial Note: Ali Asadullah, a long-time journalist and writer, is a new columnist for Altmuslim. His columns will be appearing the third week of every month, insha’Allah. His first column is part one of a two-part series looking at the roots of Muslim extremism, KKK comparisons and what brought us to our current crisis. By Ali Asadullah On January 9, 2015, just two days after the horrific Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, NBA hall-of-famer and noted American Muslim writer,... Read more
By Uzma Mariam Ahmed This election cycle has been difficult to experience, even for adults. Civil conversations and respect for diversity have been sidelined, and the loudest voices in politics and on television now are frighteningly extreme. Unsurprisingly the hateful rhetoric has filtered into American schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has just released a report entitled “Teaching the 2016 Election: The Trump Effect”. The report delves into the impact the presidential campaign has had on school children. The... Read more
Dear Young Muslim Americans: I am one of you. I write this with a heavy heart. A heart overwhelmed empathy, love, sorrow, and hope. We face many struggles right now, and with struggles come opportunities, exhaustion and questioning. Questioning about whether we’re doing it right, debates about what the best methods and solutions are, disagreements and frustration that arise from these disagreements, debates, and questions. We are going through so, so much. We need to give each other and ourselves... Read more
By Saideh Jamshidi Some Westerners, especially in France, view Muslim women who wear a hijab or head scarf, as backward-looking, oppressed by religion and unsophisticated. Such views have intensified after the Brussels terrorist attack. France, a country in anger following the ISIS attacks in Paris and fearful of the growth of Muslim extremism, is on its way to declare a cultural war against the status of women. Just recently, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stirred up controversy when he pledged... Read more
By Amanda Quraishi The biggest challenge that most disabled people have isn’t learning how to live and work with their disability in a world that privileges the abled. No, the biggest challenge is convincing others that they are just as capable of things as anyone else. Despite the leaps and bounds that the disabled community has made in the past century with legal protections, accessibility and visibility; there is still an unfair stigma that pervades and transcends cultures and societies.... Read more
Various ethnic, religious and minority groups — from Muslims to Latinos to African Americans — have watched with horror and trepidation the rise and growth of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and more so the thousands upon thousands of supporters pushing him forward and feeding into his soundbites and rhetoric. Viral videos from various Trump rallies have shown minority attendees and protesters shouted at and even physically attacked. All this has left many wondering just why Trump’s supporters are, well, so supportive... Read more
By Saideh Jamshidi To cover or not to cover, that’s the problem, but to whom? When Yves Saint Laurent co-founder Pierre Bergé recently advised fellow designers to have nothing to do with Muslim fashion, he sounded less like a renowned global fashion designer and more like the Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose speeches I used to listen to during the beginning of the Iran revolution in 1979. Bergé argued that designers’ main responsibility is to... Read more
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Sponsoring an Orphan Not Enough: A Muslim Adoption Agency Pushes for More
By Yusra Gomaa Bare, grey walls tinged with a hint of yellow inside this familiar Moroccan orphanage. Crib after crib lined up next to one another with no spaces in between. Toddlers, laying silently on their faded green polka-dot sheets, likely funded by a charitable relief program. One child, perhaps walking now, is sprawled face-down with his mini-fleeced blue jacket, sleeping peacefully, his back rising and falling with each deep breath. Two other wide-eyed boys stand on wobbly legs and... Read more