Originally published in the Tulsa World My Sept. 19 morning started off most joyfully as my wife was granted citizenship in a beautiful ceremony at the U.S. District Court in Muskogee. I hardly had a chance to appreciate this great privilege, when I saw the disturbing headline about a man in Moore, said to have been a Muslim convert, committing a most horrific act. My heart aches on hearing the...
Originally published in the Huffington Post The terrorist organization ISIS has set a new low standard of barbarity and inhumanity. Their most recent act of terrorism is a demand that Christians either convert, pay the jizya, leave their homes, or be killed. Their destruction of an 1800-year-old church in Mosul is painful, condemnable without exception, and wholly in violation of every...
Originally published in A Hotchpotch Hijabi in Italy The terrorist organization ISIS has set a new low standard of barbarity and inhumanity. Their most recent act of terrorism is a demand that Christians either convert, pay the jizya, leave their homes, or be killed. Nothing in Islam or Prophet Muhammad’s example supports ISIS’s barbarity. The below modified excerpt from my...
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 Huffington Post When the news broke that over 200 girls had been abducted by Boko Haram, I was prepared for some Islamophobic rhetoric from the Spencer/Gellar ilk. What I was not expecting were Pulitzer prize winners like Leonard Pitts, even for once, falling for the sensational “extremist Islam is scared of little girls” narrative. It’s not Islam but...
Originally published in The Huffington Post In a recent piece, new atheist Ali Rizvi argues “The phobia of being called “Islamophobic” is on the rise — and it’s becoming much more rampant, powerful and dangerous than Islamophobia itself.” While thus admitting that Islamophobia exists in some form or another, Rizvi then cites Sam Harris who contrarily claims...
Originally Published in Abury Park Press Today, the general public views the religion of Islam with malevolence. I have experienced this myself as a 14-year-old Ahmadi Muslim, living in the suburbs of New Jersey. My mother and sister both cover themselves in public, and I pray five times every day. Because of these practices, people look upon Muslims such as myself as different. The attack on...
Originally Published in the Huffington Post Our hospital’s chapel is typically empty. I offer my afternoon prayers there. Yesterday, as I was hopping from one patient room to another, I saw the dreadful slide of “Breaking News” of the Boston Bombings across TV screens. And even before I knew the death count, my Twitter feed was abuzz with various forms of prayer requests and...
Originally published in New Haven Register “All is fair in love and war.” Sixteenth century English poet John Lyly’s famous proverb means that the rules of fairness don’t count under special circumstances. In more recent times, you might remember the famous line “by any means necessary” that Malcolm X used to describe his view on the civil rights movement. The...