With all the stories on the Internet it can be difficult to always stay in the know. To help, we’ve searched the web for interesting pieces of news, videos and tips to help you start off your week on the right foot.
1. Why do so many Muslim women find it hard to integrate in Britain?
‘These are scary times,’ according to Bana Gora of Bradford Muslim Women’s Council. Above, the city’s Tul-Islam mosque. Photo/Christopher Furlong/Getty
The Guardian‘s home affairs editor Mark Townsend, writes that being “a Muslim woman in Brexit Britain offers few advantages but does guarantee membership to the most economically disadvantaged group in UK society.” According to Townsend in Manningham, England the last census found that three-quarters of its 20,000 member population were Muslim. “The prevailing concern is that emboldened bigotry and Islamophobia unleashed in the wake of the Brexit vote threatens to marginalise Muslim women to the point that they are effectively excluded,” Townsend writes.
“These are scary times, there’s a heightened fear and anxiety over what the future holds,”Gora chief executive of Bradford’s Muslim Women’s Council told Townsend. “The Muslim community feels it’s under a magnifying glass. The rhetoric in the media, constant negative messages being disseminated. It’s unsettling…We’ve had women with their headscarves ripped off.”
2. The young Muslims finding love via an app
Sana Ikarm and her husband Hakim met using Muzmatch, and about four months later they were married. Photo/Rhodri Davies/Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera writer Rhodri Davies discusses how today it can be difficult for young Muslims to use traditional methods of finding a life partner.
Davies tells the story of Arzo Kazmi, a 33-year-old financial adviser from Birmingham, England who has been looking for a husband for a while. Davies write that for Kazmi even though it’s been eight years of “matchmakers, mutual friends, and dating websites” the search for finding someone special has been “futile.”
“It feels like for ever,” says Kazmi who is of Pakistani-Kashmiri heritage.
Davies goes on to say that most of Kazmi’s friends are secular and white and that she rarely meets Muslim men that are also single.
Kazi has been using the smartphone app Muzmatch. It’s a place for young Muslims to meet potential marriage partners. “But unlike well-established dating apps, such as Tinder and Hinge, Muzmatch specifically caters to Muslims searching for a spouse – giving young Muslims greater influence in finding the right mate,” Davies writes.
“‘For me to meet a Muslim man, I need to do something different, so that’s what I’m doing,’ Kazmi says of her aim to find someone who matches her professional achievements, as well as her Western – and Islamic – values.”
3. ‘The Art of the Quar’an,’ a Rare Peek at Islam’s Holy Text
Visitors studying a folio from a large Quran dating to about 1400 in the exhibition “The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures From the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts,” at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington. Photo/Justin T. Gellerson/The New York Times
‘The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures From the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts,” at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is the first major display in the United States of handwritten copies of Islam’s holiest text.
The New York Times contributor Holland Cotter writes that, “it’s a glorious show, utterly, and like nothing I’ve ever seen, with more than 60 burnished and gilded books and folios, some as small as smartphones, others the size of carpets … Flying carpets, I should say. This is art of a beauty that takes us straight to heaven. And it reminds us of how much we don’t know — but, given a chance like this, will love to learn — about a religion and a culture lived by, and treasured by, a quarter of the world’s population.”
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5. Army Corps Of Engineers Tells Pipeline Protesters To Leave Camp By Dec. 5
Protesters — or water protectors, as they identify themselves — walk along Highway 1806, past a sprawling encampment at Standing Rock on Thursday. Thousands of people gathered to join the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Photo/Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe/Getty Images
According to NPR, on Friday, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notified the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe that the public will no longer be allowed in areas currently being used to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline.
John W. Henderson, a district commander with the Corps, said, in a letter to the tribe, that the area will be closed by Dec. 5 and anyone found on the land after will be considered as a trespasser and subject to prosecution.
The letter reads, “I am closing the portion of the Corps-managed federal property north of the Cannonball River to all public use and access effective December 5, 2016. This decision is necessary to protect the general public from the violent confrontations between protestors and law enforcement officials that have occurred in this area, and to prevent death, illness, or serious injury to inhabitants of encampments due to the harsh North Dakota winter conditions.”
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This list was curated by Kaitlin Montgomery, altM News Editor
