Reflections

A collection of 386 posts

budrus

How one Palestinian village started a movement

By Sara Reef Most of the media coverage surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focuses on stories of violence and despair. Little is known about the growing Palestinian-led non-violent movement that has united rival Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, and encouraged hundreds of Israelis to cross into the West Bank and

Colin Boyd Shafer

Somewhere along the East-West border

By Colin Boyd Shafer Living in Malaysia for almost two years has given me new insight into the socially constructed and highly subjective categories of “East” and “West”. Here in Malaysia, I am – like any other “white” person – a “Westerner” from the West with Western ideas. My individuality is lost

Common Ground News Service

The Earth is a mosque

By Ibrahim Abdul-Matin Last Thursday, on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, I found myself thinking back to my first hiking trip to New York’s Bear Mountain. I was six years old. Having grown up in Brooklyn, New York, I thought the entire world was a sea of concrete

Global Center for Renewal and Guidance

The New Mardin Declaration

All Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds and Peace and Salutations be upon Muhammad, who has been sent as a Mercy unto the Worlds, his family and all of his companions. A Peace Summit Conference (Mardin: The Abode of Peace) was convened in the Turkish city of Mardin

Hutaree

A terrorist by any other name

By Jon Pahl (April 16, 2010) – When is a terrorist not considered a terrorist? When the US media identifies him or her as a “Christian”. And when is a terrorist group not considered a terrorist group? When the US media calls it an “anti-government militia”. Exceptionalism is alive and well

islamonline

Indispensable IslamOnline must not fail

By Ramzy Baroud (April 14, 2010) – A widely popular Islamic website has been, until very recently, an undisputed success story. IslamOnline arrived at a time that millions of Muslims needed a common platform and a unifying outlet. Here was a website that neither shunned nor alienated. Its influence was upbeat

Farah Zahidi Moazzam

Confessions of a hijabi

By Farah Zahidi Moazzam (April 12, 2010) – I watched the Bollywood film My Name is Khan the other day. The brilliant depiction of an autistic person by India’s leading actor Shah Rukh Khan and director Karan Johar’s surprisingly taut direction made for a good film. In one particular

Rabia Terry Harris

The tragedy of monotheism

By Rabia Terry Harris Everybody needs a tribe. One person alone faces a frighteningly big, sometimes brutal world. Even a family can be too small to deal with some challenges that come down the pike – while if family relationships are the only ones around, obsessive family closeness can suffocate us.

canadian muslim

A niqab crisis or a community crisis

By Mohamed S. Kamel (March 20, 2010) – When a big challenge faces a community, ideally its wisest leaders come together collectively to deal with it; this is the only sure road to success. We need not dig too deeply to uncover “Danish cartoon crisis” hit the world. Montreal’s Muslim

John Esposito

The Future of Islam

By Youssef Chouhoud (March 17, 2010) – According to a recent Gallup poll, a majority of Americans still have little to no knowledge of Islam’s basic tenets. More disheartening, if not outright frightening, is that even given this avowed lack of knowledge, a sizeable percentage of US citizens nonetheless maintain

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Using Qur'anic narratives in pursuit of peace

By Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (March 5, 2010) – I consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the single biggest obstacle to eliminating Muslim-Jewish antipathy. Although this dispute is fundamentally about the distribution of assets and the power to control decisions, it is frequently portrayed as a religious conflict. And too often, opposing sides

531

Notes From the Interfaith Underground

By Anton Kuratnik (February 26, 2010) – It seems that in addition to being the MSA’s token white guy, I’ve also become its token interfaith guy. I guess the two go hand in hand, given that my token whiteness allows me to more freely navigate the seas of the

Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters

What would Muhammad do?

By Asma Uddin (February 23, 2010) – Scholar and author Omid Safi is best known to many Muslim Americans as being at the forefront of the Progressive Muslims movement, which finds in Islamic spirituality a powerful voice for social justice and pluralism. In his latest book, Memories of Muhammad: Why the

Haiti

Haiti Earthquake – was it punishment from God?

By Irshad Osman Another disaster….this time in the Western hemisphere. We all stood bewildered and dumbfounded upon hearing the news of the earthquake in Haiti. The number of deaths in Haiti is estimated at over 300,000 while the displaced are over 1 million. Another 1.5 million people

Dutch Clingendael Centre for Strategic Studies

A role for Muslim Americans in preventing extremism?

By Parvez Ahmed (February 17, 2010) – A recent report by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) states that the number of Muslim Americans vulnerable to radicalisation is small, but not negligible. Since 9/11, a total of 139 Muslim Americans have been

531

What Americans think about Muslims

By Dalia Mogahed The American people and their openness to Muslim communities will in many ways determine the success of US President Barack Obama’s global engagement initiative, which he launched on his inauguration day a year ago by calling for a “new way forward” with Muslims. Change will depend

burqa france

A Jewish voice against the "burqa ban"

By Joshua M. Z. Stanton Even as a Jew in New York, I know what it is like to be Muslim in France. While studying abroad in the French city of Strasbourg in 2007, I decided to grow a bushy beard. Little did I know that in France only traditional

Ahmed Khalil

Remembering Sheikh Mohamed Rashad

By Ahmed Khalil [Ahmed Khalil reflects on his relationship with the late Sheikh Mohamed Rashad, Imam of Ottawa’s Masjid Assalam. He passed away while on the mountain of Arafah, in Saudi Arabia, dressed in the white ihram worn by pilgrims]. I was stunned when I first read the email

Naeem Siddiqi

Racial Profiling is Not a Cure for Incompetence

By Naeem Siddiqi “The bottom line is this: the U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots – President Barack Obama, January 2010.” I am a frequent flyer – I log about 150,

531

My Melbourne Experience at the Parliament of World Religions

By Abdul Hai Patel The year 2009 will be remembered for number of international gatherings and conferences. A year, when G8 summit is changed to G20 summit, an Environment conference in Copenhagen and host of other political, social and religious conferences. But in my opinion, the most significant gathering of

common ground news

Seek Islamic spirit, not state, say Muslim scholars

By Isabelle Dana The Islamic state is a controversial issue in the West, as recent news confirms. Last October, an imam was killed and six men arrested by the FBI in Detroit for allegedly conspiring to establish an Islamic state in the United States. In the United Kingdom, government officials

Hussein Hamdani

Not even a bigot can lessen our blessings

By Hussein Hamdani Events and circumstances in the last few weeks have forced me to think about defining what it means to be a Canadian. In other words, how can we define Canadian identity? I started by turning my mind to the issue around Remembrance Day. I reflected on the

muqtedar khan

Prophet Muhammad’s Promise to Christians

By Muqtedar Khan Muslims and Christians together constitute over fifty percent of the world and if they lived in peace, we will be half way to world peace. One small step that we can take towards fostering Muslim-Christian harmony is to tell and retell positive stories and abstain from mutual

Naazish YarKhan

Violence against women is not a tenet of Islam

By Naazish YarKhan (December 28, 2009) – Listening to the radio one day, I was shocked to hear the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report on widespread occurrence of rape in Afghanistan. As a Muslim who knows that the core of her religion is about justice

Ali Gomaa

Is the Swiss ban an opportunity?

By Richard Chartres and Ali Gomaa (December 19, 2009) – The recent vote in Switzerland banning the construction of new minarets casts an unnecessary shadow on the remarkable history of tolerance, hospitality and integration that is the true story of Switzerland. It is important to remember, however, that this vote in