Metro area Muslims hope to share the traditions surrounding Ramadan through a series of community events planned for the coming weeks. Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, will begin for many Muslims at sunset on Sunday and end at sunset June 3, followed by the annual end-of-Ramadan Eid ul-Fitr festival on June 4. The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma (CAIR-OK), Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City and the Dialogue Institute of Oklahoma City have partnered with several community or

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On Massachusetts' third annual Open Mosque Day on Sunday, 18 mosques across the commonwealth opened their doors to the larger public as members answered questions and gave their neighbors a chance to get to know their local Muslim community. After prayer and a video presentation, Kashif Syed, who represents the outreach team at the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, opened the floor for questions. One woman raised her hand to ask about oppression: “How does your community deal with that?” “We put ou

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A new state law makes it easier for college students to take time off for religious holidays. Gov. Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5166 into law on Monday (April 29), making Washington the first state requiring that institutions of higher education provide academic accommodations to students who need them for religious observances. This includes rescheduling exams and permitting absences, as long as the student notifies the professor of the needed accommodation within the first two weeks of class. College p

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When it comes time for Muslims to break their Ramadan fast at sundown during Islam’s holy month, they traditionally start with a few dried dates. For their last full meal before a full day of fasting, many American Muslim families down a plate of pancakes at IHOP. It’s not because Muslims like pancakes more than other Americans. It’s because the 24-hour pancake house chain is often the only local restaurant open at suhoor, the meal eaten just before the ritual fast begins at daybreak. A new initiative cal

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The words of the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, are identical wherever it is sung, in every country where Muslims worship. "Hayya 'alas salah" is sung around the globe five times a day, including outside a construction trailer parked in a remote lot at Philadelphia International Airport by a city taxi driver, Sylla Salif. "Hayya 'alas salah." "Come to prayer. Come to prayer." As Salif sang recently, men washed their hands in streams of water from spigots, as is the Muslim custom to prepare for prayer

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In a world plagued by polarization and xenophobia, this Brooklyn judge and his law clerk rule in favor of peaceful coexistence.Judge Noach Dear, an Orthodox Jew, and his court attorney Deema Azizi, a Syrian Muslim refugee, have been turning heads at the New York Supreme Court since they began working together two years ago.“When people see Deema for the first time, they always do a double take,” he said. “With the response, ‘What a combination, an Orthodox Jew with a Syrian Muslim woman — it’s unbelieva

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When Hind Makki leads workshops on inclusive mosques, she asks attendees what they do when they’re praying at the mosque and something goes wrong. What happens, for example, when the imam’s mic inevitably suddenly stops working? For men, the answer is usually simple. The imam speaks a bit louder, and those who still can’t hear the imam take their cues on when to stand, bend and bow from the row in front of them. “But for the women, they’re like, ‘It’s pandemonium,'” said Makki, a Chicago-based interfaith

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When 23-year-old Rabia Khan was a student at Princeton University, she felt safe within the confines of its ivy-covered walls. That changed when she graduated. “I am hyperaware of whether someone will attack me or say racist things to me because I am hijabi,” Khan said. She is right to be concerned. A 2017 survey found that more than half of Muslim women living in the U.S. say they had experienced at least one incident of anti-Muslim discrimination in the last year. Women like Khan are watching closely as

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(RNS) — As a growing movement of evangelical Christian leaders is working to improve Christian-Muslim relations, a new study finds that more than 3 in 4 U.S. evangelicals say they never or infrequently interact with Muslims.

Source: Evangelicals and Muslims see similarities in faiths and favor closer ties, survey says - Religion News Service

by Daniel Tutt This past year I’ve been leading a new initiative at Unity Productions Foundation (UPF), whose mission is to counter bigotry and create peace through the media. Its documentary film The Sultan and the Saint is…

Source: Crossing the Evangelical-Muslim Divide with Film — The Interfaith Observer

On Friday afternoons, the tech startup staffers and other daily occupants of a downtown co-working space here are learning to coexist with a new neighbor down the hall: A small conference room on the third floor has been transformed into a Muslim prayer room. It’s not the most conventional setting for a mosque, but then little about Masjid al-Rabia is typical. Here, congregational prayer is typically led by a woman, as is the call to prayer. In fact, there’s no gender segregation of any sort: Men and wome

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coalition of faith groups is showing up at the state capitol every Tuesday and taking on two big tasks: Pushing legislators for policy that reflects their values and trying to redefine the political voice of the faithful in Colorado. At the launch of Faithful Tuesdays in February, prayers from a Reform rabbi and a Unitarian pastor caused the heads of those gathered to bow, and short sermon-style speeches from a Catholic priest and an African Methodist Episcopal layperson echoed around the grand halls on th

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When Yadira Thabatah converted to Islam 13 years ago from Catholicism, she was eager to learn everything she could about her new religion. The only thing slowing Yadira down was that the 34-year-old mother of three living in Fort Worth, Tex., was born blind. When she and her husband, 33-year-old Nadir Thabatah, who is legally blind but has partial vision, looked for high-quality, English-language resources that she could read, they found nothing. So in 2017, she and Nadir decided it was time for some DIY

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Muslim prisoners in Arkansas have sued the state’s prison system for requiring them to attend a combined Friday prayer service with members of the Nation of Islam and Nation of Gods and Earths. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights advocacy group, filed the lawsuit Mar. 1 against the Arkansas Department of Correction on behalf of Tucker Maximum Security Unit inmates Gregory Houston Holt, Rodney Martin and Wayde Stewart. Though the three groups, which overlap in their histories a

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