Originally published in The Examiner Qasim Rashid is an author, lawyer, member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and an outspoken critic of Muslim extremists. His new book, Extremist: A Response to Geert Wilders & Terrorists Everywhere, attempts to call out both extremist Muslims and extremist anti-Muslims. The following is an e-mail interview I did with Rashid about his book. Greetings...
Originally published in Considine No Muslim has promoted the notion of a “jihad of the pen” more poignantly than Qasim Rashid, Ahmadi spokesmen, Muslim activist and author of the new book EXTREMIST: A Response to Geert Wilders & Terrorists Everywhere. A fervent advocate of human rights and a penetrating writer on Islam, Rashid has been actively promoting religious pluralism, freedom of...
Originally published in Fox News This year, Ramadan starts on June 29. Over 1.5 billion Muslims, despite their sectarian differences, will be united to reinvigorate their faith. In a country where nearly one in four Americans don’t want to have a Muslim neighbor and some employers are not eager to recruit them, this poses a problem. Because in July 2014, folks may notice a change in the...
Originally published in The Daily Bulletin June 29th will be the first day of the fast in Ramadhan this year for all healthy Muslim men and women. The fast, which starts an hour and 20-minutes before sunrise and ends after sunset, will run for 30 days, concluding with the sighting of the new moon on July 28. The following day, July 29, will be Eid-ul Fitr, the festival commemorating the end of...
Originally published in The Daily Bulletin Dear readers: here are 10 ways you can become closer to God. These were written 125 years ago by the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the messiah and mahdi … 1. Do not associate partners with God. This means believing that God is singularly one, the only supreme being and sole creator of the universe. 2. Abstain from...
Originally published in Foreign Policy On May 13, 2014, police in the province of Punjab announced that they had registered a complaint of blasphemy against sixty-eight lawyers who had been involved in a protest against a police officer. The protest started after a senior officer allegedly detained and beat one of the lawyer’s colleagues. During the protests, the lawyers had called out the...
Originally published in The Daily Caller We’ve all heard the old adage – those who don’t learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. With the rise of ISIS, the world is at such a crossroads once again, except this time the stakes are much higher and the situation much more dire. In response to ISIS, His Holiness the Khalifa of Islam, Mirza Masroor Ahmad has unequivocally declared...
Originally published in the Tulsa World It’s nearly July, so I feel it appropriate that I should bring your attention to Christmas, or at least what many of my friends label as ‘Christmas for Muslims’. Although some people have a problem with this comparison, and while there are many differences between the Muslim month of Ramadan and Christmas, the true spirit of both these holidays has many...
Originally published in Religion News Service If a Muslim reads a Catholic newspaper in the Malay language and sees the word “Allah,” he might mistake it as a reference to the Quran and become a Christian when he learns those are actually references to the Bible. At least, that’s the reasoning Malaysian Muslim groups used when they pushed Malaysia’s Supreme Court to ban a Catholic newspaper...
Originally published in The Oregonian Q. Let’s start with the book title itself: “Demystifying Islam: Tackling the Tough Questions.” What do you think are the two or three most common misunderstandings among Americans about Islamic faith and culture? Zafar: First, there seems to be a major misconception that Islam is a monolithic entity, bereft of true diversity (of both...