*This article first appeared on ThinkProgress.com on April 18, 2016.
Professor Mahan Mirza looks out over his classroom, pausing from his lecture to gaze at the row of attentive faces stretched befor him. The class is Freshman Rhetoric, and the students have just finished discussing the merits of a speech by president Ronald Reagan. Time is up, and people are already softly packing away their notebooks into book bags, barely listening as the professor ticks off the homework assignment for the next session — another speech, this time by Ted Kennedy.
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Topics:
Education,
Fiqh,
trump,
Muslim,
General,
Islamophobia
At Zaytuna College, we're not only committed to educating tomorrow's leaders but to having a public impact today -- by providing intellectual leadership for Muslims as well as for a broader global audience.
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Topics:
Islam,
Muslim,
Islamophobia,
extremism
Prior to the tragic events of 9/11, with a few exceptions, a common concern among Muslim mosque-goers in the US was the question of whether or not it was lawful to live in America. For many, the questions of whether or not it was permissible to call oneself ‘American’ and/or participate in elections and run for office were viewed as treasonous to the Islamic teachings. Two views were common. One contingent felt that since America was not a Muslim country and its military was actively involved in incursions into the Muslim world, these facts made being Muslim and American two irreconcilable issues. The second contingent felt that since blacks were not included in the “We” of “We the People” or the “men” of “All men are created equal” when America first formed, in addition to historical social alienation suffered at the hands of whites and the American government, there was no way to reconcile Muslimness with American identity. The former rationalization was popular among recent immigrants to America, while the latter view was popular among black-American converts.
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Topics:
Race,
Justice,
Islamic Jurisprudence,
Islamophobia,
Islam,
9/11,
muslims in america,
social integration
I live in New York city, the borough of Manhattan to be precise.
My religion mandates that I pray during 5 separate windows of time every day. Those times are determined based off of a cyclical pattern of the sun.
I was once eating dinner at a restaurant in Times Square when one of the prayer times came in that had a uniquely short amount of time to be performed in given the time of year it was and how short the days were. I excused myself from dinner, letting my friends know I needed to pray, and did my best to find a quiet place where I could for a few moments in the busiest and loudest part of New York City recenter and reflect. I was lucky enough to find a somewhat empty place outside of the restaurant and so I started to pray there on the sidewalk. Immediately after I started a tour bus filled with people pulled up in front of me and emptied itself to my prostrating with M&M World behind me. As I stared at the ground more intently than I’ve ever before, I felt their stares on me and a growing discomfort inside of me.
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Topics:
Islam,
Muslim,
Islamophobia,
Future of Islam
The Islamophobia network operatives have been able to infect every aspect of society and their footprints are present in the media, political circles, education and law enforcement training.
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Topics:
trump,
politics,
Islamophobia,
how to confront islamophobia,
how to confront fear
