Originally published in the Huffington Post It is no secret I’ve been critical of Muslim leadership for their deafening apathy and silence over the 125-year worldwide persecution of Ahmadi Muslims. To add insult to injury, every time a new atrocity emerges I’m bombarded with standard anti-Ahmadi talking points in a shameless attempt to justify the violence. Just recently in...
Originally published in Fox News A recent FoxNews.com op-ed asks, “Where is the Muslim Mandela?” While alleging that such a person does not exist, and that Muslims do not seek such a person, the piece provides a laundry list of injustices done by extremists in the name of Islam — and holds 1.56 billion Muslims responsible. While the piece may have been well intentioned, it has...
How ironic. I stayed up all night writing a rejoinder to an anti-Islam politician who insists that Islam is a violent faith. Instead, I’m met by Al-Shabab who brutally murder 59 non-Muslims in Nairobi, Kenya, the Taliban who blow up a church and kill 85 Christians in Peshawar, Pakistan, and the Pakistan police who deface and destroy three Ahmadi Muslim prayer places in Sialkot, Pakistan. Each of...
Originally Published in The Daily Caller Al Qaeda, Taliban extremists, and Mike Huckabee have at least one thing in common — all believe Islam is a violent religion. In a recent tirade, Huckabee wondered, “why it is that we tiptoe around a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem on the planet in their so-called holiest days. … the most likely time to have an uprising of rock throwing and...
Originally on the CNN Belief BLOG (Repost Courtesy: CNN) Editor’s Note: Qasim Rashid is a national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. Follow him on Twitter @MuslimIQ. By Qasim Rashid, Special to CNN (CNN)–My New Year’s resolution is to not die for my faith. I’d hoped that 2012 would bring a revolution among Muslims and Muslim-majority nations to free oppressed minds. Yet I find...
Originally Posted on The Huffington Post And so as we lay 26 innocent souls to rest, we ask yet again — for the 19th time in the past 60 months alone — is this the America we envisioned? Please spare me the “it isn’t the right time to talk about gun laws” talking point. In fact, the right time was much earlier — like after Oak Creek, Boulder, or after...
Originally Published in The Washington Post As we prepare to lay 26 souls to rest in Newtown, Conn., countless are left behind, alone. As long as good people have existed, bad things have happened to them. And as long as religion has existed, believers and non-believers alike rightfully ask, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” Islam’s answer to the question of suffering does not...
Originally Published in The Daily Beast. As the volatility between Israel and Gaza continues to transform, one constant remains: rising “collateral damage.” Unrest in Israel traces back six decades but the concept of collateral damage stretches back several millennia. And while in modern times we are allegedly “more civilized,” 11-month-old Omar Masharawi’s funeral, three dead Israelis, and a...
Originally Published in The Richmond Times-Dispatch The presidential debates are history, leaving us cherishing Big Bird, binders full of women and horses and bayonets. America’s future now rests in the voters’ hands. Yet, about 90 million of us won’t vote this November — a trend that stretches back for decades. Americans have not broken the 60 percent voter turnout barrier for...
Originally Published in The Washington Post As an American Muslim activist, I receive this question all too often: “America is about freedom, free speech, and democracy—why do Muslims hate us?” The question is not at all why they hate us, but why don’t we get it. Many of age Americans remember Sept. 11, 2001—a day we justly cried out for freedom, free speech, and democracy. Fewer, however...