Posts under ‘American Muslims’

On Thursday, November 5th, Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood and killed 13 and injured 30. My initial reaction was like everyone else: extreme sadness over the loss of life, especially since it was not in a war zone and the victims were killed by another soldier. It is troubling. However, what I [...]

When choosing the right college to attend, not many people think of an Islamic college. That’s about to change. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, two prominent Muslim scholars, are planning to create the first accredited Islamic college in the United States, to be called Zaytuna College. The goal of the college is to [...]

On September 25th, 2009, the first ever Jummah (Friday) Prayer service was held outside the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. The prayer event — called “Jummah Prayer: a Day of Islamic Unity”  — drew about 3,000 Muslims from around the country. Hassan Abdullah, the head of the Dar-ul-Salaam mosque and one of the main organizers [...]

Religion doesn’t just live in sacred books or buildings. Religion lives in people. Therefore, I believe that one of the best ways to understand Islam is to get to know its people. Knowing few Muslims, I set out to find some and ask each of them a simple question: If you had only three words [...]

There have been many times that I have gone on trips and was “Flying While Muslim.” What does that mean? Well, this expression has come to describe the reality of travel for all Muslims, non-Muslim Arabs, and anyone who looks like they could be from the Middle East or any other region of the world [...]

Many Muslims in the United States will say that the events of September 11, 2001, changed their life and their outlook on their faith and their place as Americans. What it meant to be Muslim American acquired a new complexity and depth that was not true of earlier generations.  In order to deal with this [...]

On August 21st, with Ramadan beginning in most countries the following day, President Obama issued a Ramadan message to Muslim communities around the world. This is another gesture by the President to work on the relations between the United States and Muslims worldwide. For me, though, this message was unique. Growing up as a Muslim [...]

I wrote a post last week about a resolution to add the Muslim holidays to school calendars in New York. Today, I head over to the other coast of the United States where a new act intended to broaden religious freedoms has several groups, among them Muslims and Sikhs, worried over one of its clauses. [...]

On June 30th, 2009, the New York City Council passed a resolution to add the Muslim holidays–Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha–to the public schools’ holiday calendar. Both of these holidays are significant for Muslims worldwide as the first marks the end of Ramadan,the holy month of fasting, and the second marks the end of the [...]

This past July 4th weekend, in the midst of all the Independence Day celebrations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) held its 46th annual convention in the U.S. capital. The four-day conference with the theme “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” attracted an estimated 40,000 Muslims from the U.S., Canada, and other countries. [...]

In what has been widely billed as a major step in his promised effort to reach out to the Muslim community worldwide, President Barack Obama gave a speech entitled “New Beginnings” at Cairo University last week. The president did not, however, directly address conflicts between the West and the Muslim world. Instead, he tried to [...]

The following video from NBC Nightly News features our guests from that radio show — author of The Taqwacores Michael Muhammad Knight and drummer for the Kominas Imran Malik. The video highlights other individuals and bands who are also struggling to articulate this new Muslim punk genre of music and what it means to a mainstream audience.

Altmuslimah is a branch of altmuslim, a blog we’ve written about before on Inside Islam that has critical, independent thought on Islam today. Altmuslimah, on the other hand, focuses on the gender divide within Islam and opens up discussion about important issues like the women’s movement for equality in Islam recently launched as The Musawah Movement. Here in this post on Inside Islam, we outlined the emerging debates and global significance of such a movement and invite readers to leave their own thoughts as well.

The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog recently posted video of a two-part conversation with Asra Nomani, journalist, Muslim activist, and feminist. She is also part of the upcoming documentary The Mosque In Morgantown about a Muslim community in West Virginia.
“On Faith” hosts the blog of another prominent Muslim-American voice, the founder of the Interfaith Youth [...]

Identity and belonging are funny things. They never mean the same thing to everyone. Growing up as a Muslim American, I was exposed to a myriad of experiences, but I definitely cannot say I was exposed to every kind of Muslim or every interpretation of Islam. We are talking about over 1.3 billion people! What [...]

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about punk Islam in response to the LA Times’ “Islam, the Koran, and Lots of Questions.” Michael Muhammad Knight’s book about Muslim youth and the American punk music scene, The Taqwacores, as well as a band called The Kominas were mentioned in the last post. Today, I return [...]

In an earlier post on Inside Islam, we introduced Senator John Kerry’s proposed series of hearings on “Engaging with Muslim Communities Around the World.”

Update: Eboo Patel opened up about President Obama’s decision to expand federal funding and his support interfaith cooperation.

The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a hearing on “engaging with Muslim communities around the world.” The hearing is part of a series led by Senator John Kerry on improving relations between the US and the Muslim world, and will include testimonies from well-known Muslim Americans.

The next radio show for Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates is “Love and Dating in the Muslim World: True Stories of Finding Love.” The show airs live on February 18, 2009. Yesterday, Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders aired a related show which we describe below.