By Umar Lee For weeks on end the talk of the town in the St. Louis Metropolitan area had been guessing the date of the announcement of whether Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would be indicted or not. Locally the question was simply “when will The Announcement be?”. The week before the Thanksgiving saw plenty of indicators The Announcement was near. These included a press conference by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and another event where he joined St. Louis Mayor... Read more
Troops from the Missouri National Guard are prepared to deploy around Ferguson, Missouri, as the city awaits a grand jury decision on whether to indict a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in August, which ignited the city in waves of protest. The events following the tragic police killing of Michael Brown Jr. on August 9th in Ferguson have drawn both national and international media coverage. The role of Muslims in Ferguson has been a... Read more
By Zaki Hasan For his feature directing debut, Rosewater, longtime Daily Show host and “most trusted newsman in America” Jon Stewart made the somewhat counter-intuitive decision to sidestep the comedy genre entirely. Instead, he chose to tell the true-life story of Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, who spent 118 days in an Iranian prison following that country’s tumultuous 2009 elections, which saw accusations of Florida 2000-esque shenanigans following the electoral victory of Mahmoud Ahmedinajad (with the Ayatollah essentially filling the king-maker... Read more
By Amanda Quraishi Aisha: The Wife, the Companion, the Scholar Paperback: 220 pages Publisher: Tughra Books Aisha bint Abi Bakr remains one of the most compelling figures in Islamic history. Not only was she one of the wives of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but her contributions to Islamic scholarship and her influence on the foundation of the first Islamic state cannot be overstated. In a new book titled Aisha: The Wife, the Companion, the Scholar, author Resit Haylamaz takes a closer look at... Read more
By Maha Elgenaidi I broke down in tears recently while recording an interview for the Taleef Collective, which really surprised me. I was talking with the filmmaker Mustafa Davis about my views on the purposes of masajid in the United States and how much the experience of being a part of one was lacking in my life, and before I could get to the important role and value of third spaces like Taleef, I broke down. Until that moment, I... Read more
By Saadia Faruqi Are you a Muslim man with a non-Muslim wife? Or perhaps you are that rarer breed of Muslim woman who has broken with tradition and married a non-Muslim? Are you the child of an interfaith marriage? Regardless of theological implications, you may be having a difficult time managing an interfaith relationship while being Muslim. Research shows that one in five American Muslims marry someone of another faith, and that these marriages may be instrumental in assimilating Muslims... Read more
By Sabina Khan-Ibarra Social Media: Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking Activism: The policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change. My husband is one of those individuals who have chosen a life of complete abstinence from social media. Well almost complete — he has a LinkedIn account. It is a practice that I admired and at times am even jealous of. However, it... Read more
By Zainab Chaudry It’s a proud moment for Pakistan, but many Pakistanis aren’t embracing it.Malala Yousufzai — the courageous, 17-year-old young woman who became a global beacon of hope for girls seeking to gain an education — has won the Nobel Peace Prize.Predictably enough though, it hasn’t taken long for the critics to mobilize.Since Friday morning when the news broke, much of the response on social media has been favorable. But unfortunately, many reactions have been discouraging and antagonistic. One blogger wrote Yusufzai... Read more
By Zainab Chaudry If there’s one issue these days that unites self-identifying liberal and conservative political pundits who otherwise can never seem to agree on anything, it’s bashing Islam. Last week, stand-up comedian and political commentator Bill Maher invited a scholar on religion, Reza Aslan, as a guest on his HBO talk show “Real Time” and proceeded to lambast him with inaccurate generalizations regarding the status and treatment of women in Islam. Specifically, Maher wrongly painted female genital mutilation (FGM)... Read more
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The Role of Imams in the American Muslim Community – A Growing Crisis
By Imam Mohamed Abdul-Azeez Since my departure from the SALAM Center a few weeks ago, the chatter has been deafening in the community about the role of the Imam and the expectations the Muslim community should have of him. This new found free time has allowed me to engage in some deep rumination about my experience with SALAM and our community at large. Interestingly, more than 5 of the most well equipped/most well-known imams in America have left their posts... Read more