Between Allah & Jesus: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims
Despite the distorted image of Islam in the West, there remains an underlying sense of admiration and intrigue surrounding the exercise of the Islamic faith.  This fascination with the world’s fastest growing religion is one that goes beyond the old school infatuation with the exotic other, but rather a slightly more sincere attempt by outsiders to approach Islam as a guidepost for be...

A Response to 'My Take: There’s no such thing as the Bible and n
  While Beal’s statements may appear harsh, his views are similar to the Islamic outlook of the Bible. On February 22nd, author and professor Timothy Beal unleashed an oft repeated stance on Biblical error.  His blog entry, My Take:  There’s no such thing as the Bible and never has been, points to the reality that there have been as many versions and iterat...

Renewal
  Was it not that I were married on New Year’s Day, January 1st would bear no significance for observation.  Just as the American Thanksgiving is rife with historical baggage I care not to honor in celebration, the particularly Christian and Pagan origins of New Year’s Day leave me absent a compelling reason to hang a streamer.  However, the Christian New Year will be ...

Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem - A Review
  In Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem, Professor Zain Abdullah shows how Harlem is undergoing a new cultural transformation fueled by very different yet similar circumstances. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, Harlem, New York, became the center of black intellectual thought, art, music and literature. Due to the concentration of middle and upper-middle class bl...

Eid al Adha: What it Means to Me
My fondest memories of the Eid are the summertime celebrations in the park.  Since the vast majority of the families that attended my masjid were only first, second and third generation Muslims, home visits did not characterize the celebration of Eid, as they do in many other communities.  Eid celebrations were special in that they provided those without Muslim family members an opportun...

Islamophobia and the Fear of Influence
Discussions of Islamophobia often center upon the results contempt towards Muslims.  Rarely is Islamophobia viewed as a stage in the evolution of American cultural and political transformation.  Rather than viewing Islamophobia as an independent phenomenon impacting Muslims, an alternative is to treat the rise in Islamophobia as a reaction to historical political loss.  While this p...

"American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender With
Although class and gender are critiqued as factors influencing the movement and interaction of women, race and ethnicity appear to be the chief informant for negotiations within the ummah. The concept of Muslim brotherhood and sisterhood is one that rests in the collective consciousness of Muslims the world over. In theory, this unity is perceived as a natural and logical by-product o...

African American perception of the Last Prophet
Whenever anyone would ask me what "type" of Muslim I was, I'd simply say, "I have no type. I'm just a Muslim." To this day, I avoid debates over madhabs like the plague and consciously remain silent during conversations harkening back to the glory days of Islam. As an African-American Muslim woman, I have always been conscious about the difference between how I have come to view Islam...