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Music and the Mullahs – can the twain meet?
The debates about the use of music in Islamic practices specifically and music as entertainment are perhaps as old as Islam itself. These debates are not new reminds a scholar of Amnan Shiloah (1997). In the absence of clear injunctions about music in the Qur’an, secondary texts such as Hadith and other texts written by…
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What is missing in Brunei’s Shari’ah adoption story
“Our school is correct, but it may be wrong; the school of those who disagree with us is wrong, but it may be right.” – Islamic Juristic aphorism (quoted in The Story of the Qur’an by Ingrid Mattson. P.207). The quote above captures the general attitude among Islamic legal scholars, when it comes to legal…
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What can Wall Street learn from Islamic banks?
Over the past two weeks ago, I attended the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Tampa, FL and also presented at the Global Donors Forum, organized by the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists in Washington D.C. While these two events brought together very different groups of scholars and practitioners, the panels on…
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Should we all be Cosmopolitans Now?
The idea of being a ‘Cosmopolitan’ or a citizen of the world is not new and one can trace its emergence as a philosophy to the Stoics, who lived during the second and third century B.C. The most famous of them is Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations has become a classic. The idea of not belonging…
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Is Philanthropy losing its ‘meaning’?
There are various conceptions of philanthropy in American society. While some view philanthropy as a religious obligation, giving their time, treasure and talent to the Church or religious institution, others view it as a ‘social relation’, one that binds people to one another says Paul Schervish, in his paper Philanthropy as a Social Relation. Increasingly,…
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Beyond the Melting Pot?
The recent Coca Cola ad during the Super Bowl stirred up quite a controversy. While most of the negative reaction to the ad was misplaced racism, the ad did bring up an important question that for the most part, went un-examined: that of the myth of America as the land of opportunities and a place…
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Is “God Bless America” problematic ?
“We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.” – John F Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January…
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Ibn Battuta, Malcolm X and the tradition of student travelers in Islam
Rihla, or traveling to seek knowledge is an Islamic tradition, whose roots extend as far as the Prophet Muhammad himself, who prioritized learning and knowledge. His famous Hadith “Learning is from the cradle to grave” has inspired billions of people to travel, seek knowledge, over the last 1400 years of Islamic history. This tradition of…
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Egypt and the Challenge of Islam in the Public Sphere
“Know that you can have three sorts of relations with princes, governors and oppressors. The first and worst is that you visit them, the second and better is that they visit you, and the third and surest that you stay far from them, so that neither you see them nor they see you.” – Abu…
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Do We Need a New Civil Rights Movement for Religion?
As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday this week, it is relevant to ask: Has religion taken the place of race in American society? What I mean by this is whether the taboos and other aspects associated with race in the 1960s and earlier have started to be associated with religion. While Dr.…
