Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama: When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace. [NYT]
Tensions rise between Tibetans, Chinese Muslims: Disputes such as that one last summer are common in western China, where a volatile ethnic stew is increasingly erupting into violence. Among China’s dozens of minorities, few get along as badly as Tibetans and Muslims. [LA Times]
The Fight for Turkey: Let’s talk Turkey. A war is on for the country’s soul and everyone should be watching because the little matter of Islam and democracy depends in large measure on its outcome. [NYT]
June 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Islamic law plays a role in British legal system: Little known to the general public, though, is that Sharia is quietly being applied every day in Britain, via Sharia councils that dispense Islamic civil justice in more than half a dozen mosques across the country. [LA Times]
Muslim Headscarves Test the Limits of German Tolerance: For years, Germany’s legal experts have been arguing about whether Muslim public officials have the right to wear headscarves. The issue raises difficult questions about religious tolerance and constitutional rights in Germany. [Spiegel]
A New Muslim Student Group Tries to Rouse the Moderates: Where dogma and conformity once defined the Muslim scene on campus, students with liberal outlooks are emerging to assert their voices on the quad. At some American colleges where the only official Muslim events used to feature gender-segregated seating, new programs are drawing diverse Muslim and non-Muslim participants to explore the complexity of the Muslim community. [WSJ]
Ground for annulment: Why can’t a court oblige a Muslim disappointed that his new wife is not a virgin? Marriages are dissolved every day for more trivial reasons. [Mercator]
Islam stuck in the Middle Ages, says Professor Hans Kung: He said in London that Islam has “special problems” with modernity because, unike Christianity and Judaism, in which he also specialises, it has never undergone a “serious religious reformation”. [Times]
Turkish Regress: For the second time in a year, a clash between the old secular establishment and an elected government with roots in Islam has split and paralyzed Turkey. Tensions look bound to escalate, putting the Muslim world’s strongest democracy in peril. [WSJ]
June 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
How Germany Is Dismantling Civil Rights amid Terror Fears: Germany has so far been spared a bloody Islamist terror attack. But it only took two planned attacks in Germany to persuade a majority of the population to support a massive dismantling of civil rights. [Spiegel]
When religions talk: Religious leaders, scholars and business people are meeting all over the world to argue about free speech and Islamic sensibilities. How much does this achieve? [Economist]
How Islam Came to Germany: The history of Islam in Germany goes back as far as the 8th century. From the reign of Charlemagne, to Goethe’s literature, to the Turkish guest workers who arrived in the 1950s and 60s and made a home here, the Muslim religion has been a part of German culture for hundreds of years. [Spiegel]
June 16th, 2008 at 11:01 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Muslim t-shirt designers take a smack at American ignorance: The Calgary, Canada-born Abdel-Rahim owns the Muslim t-shirt business Phatwa Factory, one of several Middle Eastern-accented t-shirt businesses to spring up in saucy retort to the outpouring of anti-Muslim sentiment since 9/11. From Rootsgear’s “100 percent Randomly Searched at the Following Airports” and casualdisobedience.com’s “Enemy Combatant” tees, to the lighter “Lebanese Princess,” and “Allah’s Little Angel,” they are getting their message across. [Daily Star]
Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity: Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that normally breaks in the first act of intercourse. “In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.” [NYT]
Miss Headscarf competition won by Iraqi: Denmark is facing a renewed bout of Muslim protests after a television station chose an Iraqi woman to be Miss Headscarf 2008. [Telegraph]
President Of Indonesia Restricts Muslim Sect: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree on Monday ordering members of a minority Muslim sect to stop practicing their form of Islam or face arrest. Members of the sect, known as Ahmadiyah, do not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, contrary to a central tenet of mainstream Islam. They have been the victims of violent attacks by extremists in recent years. [NYT]
June 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Belgium’s dwindling churches to be converted into mosques: Churches in Belgium are to be turned into mosques as Christian congregations decline while Muslims demand more places to worship. [Telegraph]
The fallacy of Islamic ‘national suicide’: A new buzzword is arising from the network of Israeli think tanks and security-oriented academic departments bent on instigating a U.S. attack on Iran: “national suicide.” The term describes a supposed Arab Muslim tradition of politically motivated suicide at the national, not just individual, level. [LA Times]
Why ‘deradicalisation’ is not the answer: This strategy will fail for the simple reason that the government has yet to fully appreciate what the influences are that they seek to alter. In addition, officials have no idea as to what it is they would wish to alter them to. [Spiked]
June 9th, 2008 at 10:22 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
A Multicultural Model for Europe: After centuries of denying a common history with Islam, Spaniards are once again trying to live together with Muslims. In Granada, home of the Alhambra and former center of Moorish Spain, a multicultural revival is taking shape that sees Christians and Muslims coexisting in mutual respect. [Spiegel]
Online Matchmaking Sites Court U.S. Muslims: A growing online matchmaking movement has many Muslim women elbowing aside courtship traditions. [AlterNet]
Miss Headscarf contest for Muslims attacked: The country’s Islamic Faith Society has criticised the decision by Danmarks Radio to show “cool Muslim women who often make up a very fashion-conscious and style-confident part of the Danish street scene”. [Telegraph]
May 30th, 2008 at 10:57 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Racists made life hell, says son of murder accused Habib Khan: Years of misery endured by a Pakistani family living next door to British National Party activists were outlined yesterday in the murder trial of a Muslim man accused of stabbing his far-right neighbour to death in the street. [Times]
Al Jazeera English Tries to Extend Its Reach: The English-language offshoot of Al Jazeera, the Arabic television news network, is pushing for a “breakthrough” that would make the channel available to American TV viewers and help it move beyond a turbulent start-up phase, according to its new managing director, Tony Burman. [NYT]
CONTROVERSY OVER ‘LENIENT’ SENTENCE German Muslim Sentenced for Stabbing Rabbi: An Afghanistan-born German Muslim has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail after he stabbed a rabbi in a Frankfurt street last September. The Jewish cleric believes the man was trying to kill him and that the sentence is too lenient. [Spiegel]
May 20th, 2008 at 8:39 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Young Video Makers Try to Alter Islam’s Face: When Ali Ardekani started fishing around on the Internet a couple of years ago for video blogs about Muslims, he did not like what he found: either the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims were depicted as bloodthirsty zealots, or they were offering defensive explanations as to why they were not. [NYT]
Loving and Leaving the Head Scarf: What hijab’s revolving door says about the religious mobility of American Muslims. [Slate]
Turning towards Mecca, Islamic banks join in the race for Africa: CHINA is not the only financial powerhouse with its hungry eye on Africa. Flush with oil wealth, the Gulf states, too, are spying profitable opportunities among the hundreds of millions of Muslims who live just a hop across the Red Sea. [Economist]
May 13th, 2008 at 10:12 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
Avoiding caricature in an American sitcom about Islam: Two summers ago, when Moses Port and David Guarascio, both television writers, pitched their unorthodox and potentially controversial premise for “Aliens in America” - a comedy built around a Pakistani Muslim exchange student who moves in with a somewhat reluctant family in small-town Wisconsin - they were pleased to discover that studio and network executives at CW were enthusiastic about the idea. [IHT]
In the library with a leading Islamic liberal: Egyptian Gamal Banna backs women’s right to lead prayers and thinks clerics should adapt to modern times. [LA Times]
Al-Jazeera chief ‘fired for being white Christian’: A television executive has demanded more than £1 million in compensation from the Arabic station al-Jazeera claiming that she was fired because she was not a Muslim. [Telegraph]
May 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
French Muslims Fight for Recognition and Respect: After generations of living in France, Europe’s largest Muslim community is still struggling for recognition amid widespread stereotypes and suspicions. Despite the presence of some Muslim ministers in the French cabinet, most Muslims in France have to fight discrimination daily. [Speigel]
In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims: This prison is majority Muslim — as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population. [Washington Post]
May 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
This article is filed under Blog, Integrating Islam.
