Farah Pandith served as the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities, appointed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009. In this role, she created Generation Change, which gathered young “change makers” together to work on issues such as violent extremism; Viral Peace, an online counter-extremism initiative; and Hours Against Hate, a…
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You know you’re in trouble when Nobel Prize winners take part in carrying out genocide. For years, the Muslim Rohingya population of Myanmar has been suffering at the hands of its government, led now by famed Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. They have been subject to mass murder and…
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From the notorious Pepsi commercial and H&M’s video promoting their recycling project, to the cover of Vogue Arabia and CR Fashion Book, women donning the hijab are acquiring greater media visibility than ever before. On the face of it, this is a welcome development. For decades, feminist scholars and activists…
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On Monday, May 22, the world was yet again rocked by a terrorist attack. The attack followed a script we have become all too familiar with — a terrorist set off a bomb in a crowded public place, killing and wounding dozens of people. This latest attack was at an…
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My connection with Manchester happened purely by accident. I initially started out my undergraduate degree in London. But after a family crisis sent my family and I into a domestic violence refuge, push came to shove and we were eventually forced to relocate to my mother’s home town of Bradford….
Read MoreBefore the elections, we were told that our fears of a Trump presidency were unfounded, that we were overreacting, and should have faith in humanity. But in recent days, less than two months after the election, we hear stories daily that are horrifying and heartbreaking. We hear stories of Latino…
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Based in Montgomery, Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been at the forefront of the fight against racism and for civil rights since 1971. More recently, in its efforts to track and eliminate hate and extremism in this country, it has provided some invaluable resources on anti-Muslim bigotry….
Read MoreIt seems like every week we in the U.S. have another mass shooting to decipher and process. So, the June 12 shooting in Orlando was not the first time I posted a call to action on Facebook, contacted my elected representatives about gun control, or held my breath and hoped…
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altM’s Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and religious liberties lawyer Asma Uddin reviews the Marrakesh Declaration, and what it means for religious freedom. In the 13th century, when the Mongols conquered Baghdad, their ruler Hulagu Khan gathered the religious scholars in the city and asked them: According to spiritual law, which option is…
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After a horrific and massive assault on a university in Pakistan, some scholars responded with alarm that the Taliban seem to increasingly be targeting schools, with a dramatic spike in the number of attacks in recent years. Why do groups as different as the Taliban, Boko Haram, the White House’s…
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