Gender and Sexuality

Can a Muslim Woman Marry a Jew? Or Other Non-Muslim? from The Goatmilk Debates

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“THE GOATMILK DEBATES” is an ongoing series featuring two debaters tackling an interesting or controversial question in a unique, irreverent manner. Each debater makes their opening argument. They can elect to post a rebuttal. The winner will be decided by the online audience and judged according to the strength of their argument. The motion: “Muslim Women Should Be Able to Marry Non-Muslim Men”

For the motion: Nadia B. Mohammad
Against the motion: May Alhassen
For the Motion – Nadia S. Mohammad – “Muslim women should be able to marry non-Muslim men”
When Huma Abedin, aide to Hilary Clinton, married Anthony Weiner, New York Congressman, it sent tongues wagging in the Muslim community.

Islam

Barack Obama, Muslim President

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Exhibit A: Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder during his 2006 visit to Kenya. The photograph was circulated during the presidential election campaign in 2008, regarded by Democrats as a smear. Photograph: AP. One wonders why only 20% of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim, considering the overwhelming evidence conclusively proving his slavish allegiance to Islam and utter disregard for Christianity. After Obama’s wishy-washy defence of Muslim Americans’ freedom to build a community centre, which includes a mosque, two blocks away from Ground Zero, a poll from the Pew Research Centre reveals that nearly 20% of Americans – up from 11% a year ago – consider him a Muslim, and nearly 43% are unsure of his religion.

art

The Power of Storytelling: Creating a New Future for American Muslims

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Originally published in Patheos.com

WAJAHAT ALI
In 7th-century Arabia, the storyteller was valued more than the swordsman. The audience sat on the floor surrounding the gifted orator as he captivated the eager listeners with beautiful poetry narrating their history. In the 21st century, the art form may have evolved to include motion pictures, TV shows, theater productions, novels, and standup comedy, but they all serve the same function: storytelling. Ideas and principles are most effectively communicated and transmitted when they are couched in a narrative. Stories, whether they concern the etiquette and biography of prophets or the trials and tribulations of America’s founding fathers, inform and influence a cultural citizenry of its values and identity.

Gender and Sexuality

“Muslim Americans Should Support Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage” – Michael Muhammad Knight for GOATMILK DEBATES

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“THE GOATMILK DEBATES” will be an ongoing series featuring two debaters tackling an interesting or controversial question in a unique, irreverent manner. Each debater makes their opening argument. They can elect to post a rebuttal. The winner will be decided by the online audience and judged according to the strength of their argument. The motion:””Muslim Americans Should Not Oppose Legalization Of Same Sex Marriage””
For the motion: Sabir Ibrahim [Read his post here] and Michael Muhammad Knight
Against the motion: Mahdi Ahmad[Read his post here] and Sister A. [Read her Opening Argument here.]

MICHAEL MUHAMMAD KNIGHT: FOR THE MOTION
First things first: this is not an attempt to reconcile the Qur’an, Prophetic tradition, or classical Islamic thought with the cause of LGBTQ rights.

Christianity

Scriptural Reasoning: A Student Movement for Interfaith Understanding

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Scriptural Reasoning, a technique developed at Cambridge University and the University of Virginia, is known as much for its peer-reviewed journal as for its august participants. But it is on the verge of going mainstream, shaking up the way we understand each other’s scriptures and taking root on college campuses around the country. Approximately twenty Scriptural Reasoning (SR) groups exist across North America and the United Kingdom. But that number is likely to balloon as college chaplains take SR to their campuses. Two leading scholars of SR, Peter Ochs, Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, and Homayra Ziad, Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College, brought the technique to the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Chaplains (NACUC) this past spring, where it was warmly received.

Empathy

Trust — a Fair Default Mode for Our Relationships?

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Tariq Ramadan is one of the most visible Muslims in Europe. Charismatic, loved, hated, feared. A source of inspiration for many young European Muslims, a reference; suspected and accused of double talk by many non-Muslims.
I consider him a friend; I wrote a review for Tikkun, defending him against Caroline Fourest’s book attacking him. At a conference that I helped to organize, Ramadan was coming to speak. There were also two Muslim imam friends present, and I asked each in private what they honestly thought of him.

Islam

Ahmadi Mosques in Pakistan Attacked

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My friend Sabuhi just wrote to let me know about the horrible attacks against two Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat mosques in Lahore Pakistan. News reports say that at least 70 people were killed. When another friend, Samina had visited Pakistan earlier this year, she was heartbroken at the way her family’s lives had changed. Gone were the days of happily wandering around the community, seeing friends, enjoying the sights and sounds of a bustling neighborhood. “When you send your child or spouse out, you never know if they’re going to come back.

Christianity

Infiltration and revisionism in Texas

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The New York Times ran an engrossing and very timely look back in February at the momentous yet curiously under-reported battles that have been waged for decades in the Lone Star State over the religious, scientific and political message of its school textbooks. The stakes are a lot higher than you might guess. Given the endless complaints one hears on the Right of the tyrannical hold on American intellectual life enjoyed by liberal “cultural elites”, you’d never guess that in matters of curriculum most schools in America are far less affected by multiculturalist educators in the Manhattan or San Francisco than evangelical activists in Dallas or Austin. Yet, according to the Times article, thanks to the state’s buying power and the difficulty other states fortuitously have in adopting natural rival California’s exactingly customized curricula, Texas finds itself unexpectedly the national trendsetter in the domain of public school textbooks. The issue of Texas’ influence is a touchy one in education circles.

Islam

Where are the Muslim voices against terrorism… HERE!

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Just in case someone asks (in person, on the radio, or on some news program on TV) “Where are the Muslim voices condemning the attempted bombing in New York?” you can let them know that some of them are right here. First a video from CAIR and then a transcript from a statement by Naseem Mahdi, national vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the U.S.
[youtube: video=”2l-Pcrc2CP4″]
Council on American Islamic Relations
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/4/10) — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today welcomed the arrest of a suspect in connection with last weekend’s failed car bomb attack on Times Square. (View video of today’s news conference.)
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with several other national and regional Muslim groups,* said the alleged actions of the Pakistani-American suspect are not representative of the nation’s Muslim community and urged fellow citizens not to allow the incident to be exploited to advance growing anti-Islam sentiment. In a statement released this afternoon at a news conference in Washington, D.C., CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in part: (View video of today’s news conference.)
“On behalf of the American Muslim community, we condemn the attack in Times Square and thank all those who reported their suspicions, disarmed the bomb or are participating in the current investigation.

Environment

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is a passage entitled “The Cosmos and Revelation” from Islamic Spirituality: Foundations by philosopher and professor of Islamic studies Seyyid Hossein Nasr:

The revelation that comes from Him to Whom belong the heavens and the earth and all that is between them and below the earth also addresses itself to all these realms of the cosmic hierarchy as well as to man. The Quran is, in a sense, a Revelation unto the whole of creation, and one of its primary functions is to awaken in man an awareness of the Divine Presence in that other primordial revelation which is the created order itself. Primordial man saw the phenomena of nature in divinis, as the story of Adam in paradise reveals. Islam, in bestowing upon man access to this primordial nature and in addressing itself to the primordial man within every man, unveils once again the spiritual significance of nature and the ultimately theophanic character of the phenomena of the created order. It enables man to read once again the eternal message of Divine Wisdom written upon the pages of the cosmic text.