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Dozens of women activists, leaders and lawmakers have joined a petition denouncing a death threat against congressional candidate Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the first Muslim woman to run for federal office from New Jersey.

The 27-year-old is the founder of MuslimGirl.com, an online magazine with a global audience. After hosting a virtual town hall on Instagram, she said someone called her phone, and using racial slurs against Muslims, threatened to kill her and her family.

“It’s unnerving for anybody to hear somebody threaten their family, let alone have...

Last Friday, as the first day of Ramadan drew to a close, Rami Ismail prepared his iftar, the meal to end the day’s fast, at his apartment in Hilversum, the Netherlands: laban bil balah, an Egyptian-style fast-breaking drink of chilled milk with dates and cashews; Dutch uienkruier flatbread with cheese and onions; salmon over a bed of quinoa and spinach. The portion size suggested it was a dinner for one, but Ismail was about to host an iftar party. As he sat down to eat, he turned on his Nintendo Switch and set a virtual table in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. ...

Last Ramadan, Amara Kamal woke up every morning in Cumberland Hall about an hour before sunrise. She ate and prayed before spending the rest of the day studying and going to classes. While the sun was in the sky, she didn’t eat or drink. When her friends went to the dining hall, she stayed behind and finished her homework.

But when the sun set, Kamal, an interfaith and spiritual diversity intern for Multicultural Involvement Community Advocacy, helped prepare its iftar feast in the Stamp Atrium, where Muslim students would pray and eat as a community.

The holy month of Ramadan, observed by fasting from dawn to dusk, has many themes: sacrifice, discipline, devotion, empathy, gratitude, generosity.

But for many Muslim communities, what defines Ramadan, which begins this week, are the moments of community: sharing platters of dates to break their fasts, the call to prayer reverberating through the halls of packed mosques, filling empty stomachs with mouthwatering nightly meals known as iftars — plates piled high with the black Muslim staple bean pie, South Asian samosas and maqluba in Arab traditions — the...

Esther Roman wasn’t even in the room when she witnessed what she describes as “probably the holiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

A doctor whose patient was suffering from COVID-19 had used an iPad to connect with Roman, a 38-year-old staff chaplain at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, and members of the patient’s family. As the patient’s family told him that if they could, they would be in the room to comfort him, Roman saw – in the digital frame – the doctor reach out and stroke his hair.

“I don’t think that image will ever leave me,” Roman...

The Muslim call to prayer will be broadcast the traditional five times a day in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, beginning with the start of Ramadan this week and continuing through the end of the religious holiday in May.

It will be the first time the call to prayer, commonly broadcast from mosques in Muslim nations, will be heard in Minnesota.

Designed to encourage Muslims to maintain safe distancing during a holiday typically marked by community prayer, the arrangement was approved Tuesday by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, working...

As the coronavirus outbreak takes a disproportionately deadly toll on seniors and African Americans, a new oral history initiative aims to train black Muslim youth to document their elderly community members’ stories.

The Wisdom of the Elders Project is a “long-overdue” effort to capture black Muslim seniors’ “past, present and uncertain future” before it is too late, coordinator Asha Noor said.

“Our mission is to disrupt the narratives which say our...

A coalition of 20 faith groups is pressing prison officials across the country to accommodate all prisoners’ religious needs during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, particularly with Ramadan around the corner.

“Prisons remain under an obligation to accommodate religious practice to the maximum extent possible, even as they act to mitigate the health crisis,” reads the letter, sent to...

With mosques’ biggest fundraisers of the year in jeopardy, a new crowdfunding initiative led by four prominent Muslim American leaders aims to protect the livelihoods of imams and other mosque staff around the country.

The initiative has raised about $155,000 as an emergency stopgap measure to maintain mosque staff’s income. The funds will be distributed to mosques and Islamic centers that...

On Thursday, March 19th, Idris Abdul-Zahir, an imam in West Oak Lane, Philadelphia, wrestled with whether his mosque, Masjidullah, should open the following afternoon for the Friday prayer service, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. The mosque, one of about seventy in the Philadelphia area, has almost a thousand members. It also hosts a day-care center for nearly two hundred children, called the Masjidullah Early Child Care Academy, or mecca; an online Islamic school for forty students, called the New Medina...

REV. THOMAS CONWAY 

Executive Director of St. Anthony Shrine, Boston; interviewed on Sunday, March 15.

"I got a call yesterday from a woman saying, “I’m sitting outside the [church] building,” and she was crying. Her brother was in ICU, and because of the coronavirus crisis, she wasn’t able to go visit him. And he was dying. She had a very reasonable request: “Can we just pray for him for a minute?” And I said, “Sure, we can do that.” So we stood outside, and we prayed on the...

The Islamic community is concerned the COVID-19 pandemic may interrupt Ramadan. Local Imams and Muslim community leaders said depending on the masjid, Ramadan services could be canceled, altered or remain as planned.

“We are looking at April 24 being the first day of Ramadan on this side of the world. We are hoping this has [ended] by then but we are preparing for the worse,” said Aliya Khabir, principal consultant, AZK Communications, LLC. “What I’ve seen is that Imams and their boards have been meeting daily by phone to discuss next steps because the...

While the doors at many houses of worship are closed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, there are still ways to access spirituality online. Houston is home to a number of locally made podcasts, dedicated to exploring faith. These digital audio files can be downloaded and listened to whenever and wherever is convenient.

Interfaith Podcast Project

If Houston could tell its story, it would include a tale of diverse religions thriving in one city. That’s a challenge “Interfaith Podcast Project” accepted — exploring different faith traditions in a way that...