The media may have already lost interest, now breathlessly reporting the latest information about “Jihadi John’s” real identity, but many communities across the United States and around the world are still mourning the loss of three innocent souls, shot in their home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha a few weeks ago have touched us on a visceral and intimate level. I have seen Americans of all races, civil rights and... Read more

Interfaith group tours a local mosque; allows Muslim women to see  neighborhood mosque in a new light February 2015* Al-Burkakee – Zainab Mohamed has a direct view of the the shining gold dome and white minaret of the 2-story Sayyida Aisha Mosque from the window of her office in a gleaming downtown high rise. Mohamed often drives by the mosque during her 45-minute commute home, but she is not a regular. Soon after she moved to Al-Burkakee for her job... Read more

The discussion over the controversy surrounding the Muslim Leadership Initiative continues. Last month, I compiled a series of articles, videos and links of the debate, which can be found here. There has been more discussion  in the last few weeks to warrant a second round of Linksies, which I’ve compiled below. These links include discussions about ways to handle in-group disagreements, the nature of solidarity, the interfaith dimension, the political nature of Palestinian statehood, and a deeper dive into political... Read more

A quick look at social and traditional media over the last 24 hours and you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that one of the most important events that occurred this week wasn’t the Ukrainian war intensifying with a deadly attack on civilians in a government-held city, but that Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States, visited Saudi Arabia with her husband. And while she was there, FLOTUS did not cover her head. The First Couple cut their trip... Read more

For American Muslim twitterati, 2014 was, in many ways, defined by major social media conflicts. Muslims quarreled online about the Abu Easa controversy, Alice in Arabia, the movement to boycott the White House Iftar, the “Happy” music videos, and the conversations about race in privilege around community inattention to anti-black police brutality. But arguably the deepest cleavages emerged around the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), a project by the Shalom Hartman Institute. MLI invites hand-picked American Muslim chaplains, journalists, interfaith activists... Read more

As France, and indeed Europe, is left to unpack the horrific murders of nearly a dozen cartoonists and policemen at the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and 4 Jewish shoppers at a Kosher grocery store, I find myself across the pond thinking about the relationship between freedom of speech and notions of the sacred in popular Western discourse. The magazine was notorious in France for it’s unapologetic satire; it’s most controversial pieces often published racist and pornographic caricatures of... Read more

It’s been a tough week for people of conscience. Americans are still reeling and protesting over the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York – decisions that have laid bare the truth about ugly racial fault lines that still scar the collective national soul. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the result of their investigation of the use of torture on terror suspects by CIA. Among the myriad morally reprehensible and information found in the report (rectal “feeding”, threatening... Read more

I only realized the irony of consistently being asked to explain why my name was funny and why we spoke a different language at home to my fellow students at Robina Lyle Elementary School, who, while white and nominally Christian and had names like David and Lisa, nonetheless also owned multi-syllabic Greek and Polish last names full of tongue-twisting consonants and delightfully rhyming vowels, when I reached adulthood.  I sincerely answered my classmates’ sincere questions about how many wives my... Read more