Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslims, following them from West Africa to the Americas. Although many assume that what Muslim faith they brought with them to the Americas was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu, as Sylviane A. Diouf demonstrates in this meticulously-researched, groundbreaking volume, Islam flourished […]
Epilogue: Islam banned gambling and alcohol 1400 years back. The Qur’an, the Muslim Holy Book, speaks of these quite clearly and prohibits them. Modern civilization is only coming to learn […]
cosmosmagazine.com: NON FICTION Light from the East: How the science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western world, by John Freely I.B. Taurus (2015) In their frustration and disgust at the barbarity of the modern day Islamic extremists, many commentators in the West, groping for a context in which to […]
Guardian: The meeting had already eaten up the morning when Michael Jackson, executive producer of the BBC’s new art epic, Civilisations, challenged me to explain why Michelangelo needed to be in a world history of art for a 21st-century audience. I gave, I thought, a passionate explanation: that Michelangelo invented the […]
Source: IBTimes UK Newsweek interviews Caliph of Ahmadi Muslims on wars, persecutions and the meaning of religion today.
The Wire: For the past month, Rajasthan has been convulsed by a controversy over the Bollywood movie, Padmavati, based on Padmavat – a prose-poem written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540 CE which uses Alauddin Khilji’s conquest of Chittor in 1303 CE and his supposed obsession with Rani Padmini of Chittor as a […]
patheos.com: Polygyny (Polygamy) remains a contentious marital option in Muslims cultures globally. There is a spectrum of cultural contextual practices and notions about the institution. Muslims either are staunch proponents, vehement detractors or somewhere in between when it comes to how many women one man marries. More:
The Atlantic: Taz Ahmed is 38, single, Muslim, and Bengali. She describes herself as spiritual, but not particularly religious. When she was growing up, her immigrant parents hoped she would marry an I.T. worker they found for her in Oklahoma. “I’m like, ‘I don’t even know who this person is, […]
Daily Times: His Highness Aga Khan-IV, the hereditary imam of the Ismaili Aga Khani community, is on a visit to Pakistan. To my mind he represents the true spirit of Islam: progress, humanity, education, and economic progress as ethical imperatives and dictates of Islamic doctrine. As a religious leader can […]
Guardian: Last week, almost 3,000 scientists and policymakers from 120 countries gathered on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan for the 2017 World Science Forum. It was a landmark moment for Jordanian science, and a tribute to the vision of Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, president of Jordan’s Royal Scientific […]
Huff Post: This is the second article in a three-series on the geopolitical, social and religious backdrop to the rise of Islam in the 7th century, what it historically reveals and how it contextualizes against narratives of extremists and critics. Read the first part here. Historians have marveled at how the […]
Source: The Daily Times: OP-ED By Akbar Ahmed, who is an author, poet, filmmaker, playwright, and is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington, DC. He formerly […]
Review: I am excited to share the new book of John Andrew Morrow (editor), Islam and the People of the Book: Critical Studies on the Covenants of the Prophet. My own chapter in the book focuses on how the Covenants of Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of his time embodied the spirit of […]
Review In his study of the hitherto largely neglected and yet remarkable contribution of the reformist Ahmadiyya Movement, nowadays persecuted in different parts of the world, Ron Geaves shines a welcome and long overdue light on pioneering Muslim missions in Britain during the inter-war years. With the Movement’s members presenting […]
keyt.com: SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – When members of the nation’s oldest Muslim community heard about the terror investigation in New York City they chose to speak out against the deadly bike path violence. ” In times like these when terrorists try to separate us we need to remember the true meaning […]
Source: The Washington Post By Jonathan Eig October 26 at 11:02 AM Jonathan Eig, the author of the biography “Ali,” about boxer Muhammad Ali, holds a letter that Ali wrote to his […]
A recent step taken by the kingdom’s ulama represents a turning point. The attempt to curb extremism Chiara Pellegrino | 02 March 2017 Moroccan ulama Free to leave Islam without facing death: this is the turning point of Morocco’s ulama, the religious scholars. Apostasy, in Arabic “ridda”, has always been a critical issue […]
Most surveys of philosophy in the Islamic world share the same shortcomings. They focus primarily on a couple of traditions, restricted by creed (“Islamic philosophy”), language (“Arabic philosophy”), or geography (“philosophy of Middle East” or “Near East”) at the expense of covering the contributions of scholars from other milieus. They […]
onreligion.co.uk: The link between terrorism and hate crime is clear – apparently. An article in The Independent quoted Fiyaz Mughal of Faith Matters that “the biggest driver of anti-Muslim hate is terrorist attacks – the research is very clear here” (some more nuance to these views was given later through […]
Source: BBC News Researchers in Sweden have found Arabic characters woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves. The discovery raises new questions about the influence of Islam in Scandinavia, […]
