Word: islamics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...prayer leader is Amina Wadud, an Islamic scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the organizers who invited her claim that she is the first woman to have presided over a mixed-gender prayer service in public since Islam's earliest days. The event was held in a cavernous hall on the grounds of New York City's Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine because no major mosque would play host to it. "There are still men who believe women are not allowed to be leaders. They're bullies," says organizer Asra Nomani, author of the new book Standing Alone...
...until the Tang emperors solidified control in 589, China was both politically and culturally a very messy place. Confederations of mounted nomads from the steppes were ransacking China's northern flank while to the South, Chinese aristocrats tangled with one another. Buddhism was seeping in from India and Islam from Central Asia and the Middle East. But rather than shun this cultural commotion, many Chinese came to welcome it?after all, the interlopers brought along some really cool stuff. Local artisans copied and reinterpreted foreign objects, and wealthy Chinese connoisseurs were entombed with their collections so that they could continue...
From before Sept. 11, mainstream Muslims have found themselves in a very unenviable position: constantly having to explain that Islam is a religion of peace to an increasingly skeptical international community. After every bombing or terrorist plot performed in the “name of Allah and Islam,” a procession of Western Muslims could be found on news channels and talk shows trying to contain any potential backlash on the greater Muslim community...
...Islamic Commission of Spain, which represents the country’s one million Muslims, issued a fatwa (or Islamic edict) against Osama bin Laden. This fatwa declared bin Laden and al Qaeda’s terrorist acts at opposition with the teachings of Islam and bin Laden’s use of the Koran to justify his actions as unlawful. It also calls for all Muslims to consider al Qaeda apostates of Islam...
This is the first time that a Muslim religious organization has come out so strongly against bin Laden and his supporters and has been bold enough to declare them as outside of Islam. And the fact that this is coming from within the Muslim community is empowering. Only the Muslims themselves can effect the change necessary to remove these extremist elements from their religion—just as it took a people’s uprising in Lebanon to spur Syria’s nascent withdrawal. And as the representative of one million Muslims, the Islamic Commission of Spain...