On March 8, the Women’s March is joining forces with the International Women’s Strike in a day of action called A Day Without a Woman. People will be participating by withholding their purchasing power (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses), wearing red to show solidarity, attending rallies, livestreaming events,…
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The past two years have seen increasing media attention in Europe and America on the world’s ongoing refugee crisis. Airwaves are deluged with images of desparate people floating in dilapidated boats trying to reach Greece and Italy. Lines of people, dirt streaked and desparate, trudging through fields and forests in…
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Fifteen towns in France have issued bans on the full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women and nicknamed the “burkini,” citing public order and security concerns. According to the ordinance in Cannes, “Beach attire that ostentatiously displays a religious affiliation, while France and places of worship are the target of…
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A few weeks ago, just prior to the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology met in Islamabad. The agenda for the meeting was packed, and 19 of the Council’s 20 members were present. The main issue for debate was the question of whether…
Read MoreA HUSBAND and wife in Pakistan can never be alone again. In between them sit the clerics of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). However small the space may be, the mullah in the middle would like to prescribe what is to happen between them. He tells the wife that…
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The news of Sadiq Khan winning the mayoral race in London spread like wildfire in Muslim circles. WhatsApp groups, Twitter, Facebook, texts and emails were full of surprise and pride. In a time of rising Islamophobia in the western world this news was welcome validation that Islamophobia can be overcome….
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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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“People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.” (Daoud, The Sexual Misery of the Arab World) In an era of fear and loathing, cultural difference stealthily, yet all too…
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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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This has not been the best week ever. Quite to the contrary, this has been a week in which many of us have had to come to terms with and process terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, Nigeria, Mali, and many other places the world over. All the while, news of…
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