On February 10, Abdul Jamil Kamawal, a 68-year-old Afghani American man, was bludgeoned to death with a shovel in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. Remembered as “a pillar in the Muslim community,” he had helped refugees settle in the region for over two decades. Abdul Jamil Kamawal He also founded…
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Western etiquette dictates that there are three topics never to be discussed at a dinner party – personal finances, politics and sex. Somehow my Indo-Pakistani /Muslim compatriots missed the memo on the first two topics. At parties I am routinely asked what my husband makes and how much we paid…
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In a brightly lit office in Bradford’s Carlisle business centre, on a road lined with charity shops, grocery stores and a green-domed masjid, Bana Gora and her team at the Muslim Women’s Council (MWC) are organising final preparations before a much-awaited consultation about the UK’s first women-managed mosque. At the…
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Police brutality has taken much-needed steps into the public spotlight over the last couple of years. Despite that fact, the outrageous trend of Police Officers brutalizing citizens not only continues, but the apparent marathon of video recorded incidents of police use of excessive force seems to be growing more grotesque…
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I listened to a woman recite Quran recently. I did a show at an all-girls college over the weekend, and like at many Islamic events, someone got up to recite Quran to start the event on a blessed note. But this time it was a girl (gasp! dun dun dunnnnnnnn!)…
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Many Muslim women have been actively raising the issue of #AllMalePanels at Muslim events, as witnessed by the recent Twitter conversation #NextTimeRememberHer. Responding to this dilemma of all-male, or otherwise male-dominated, panels, Muslim women have created a pledge that they urge Muslim men to sign. The pledge asks the signatory…
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The winter of 2013 was an eventful one for me. As a second-year medical student from Pakistan, I spent two months at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore for a research elective-. It was a time of excitement, wonder and anxiety. One afternoon, after hurrying back to the office from lunch, I stood fidgeting…
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I am a single woman who is not able to drive. A combination of sensory processing and anxiety issues means that I have never felt fully in control of a car and have learned from experience that it’s safer for both myself and others if I’m not on the road….
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The idea grew out of the tragedy of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. A dear friend of mine of Jewish faith, horrified at the growing intolerance and hate in the world and the comments she was hearing that the Paris attacks somehow represented the values of Islam, approached me to…
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For people in Karachi the heat wave of the last week has coincided with the first days of Ramadan. Mohammad Hanif (author of “A Case of Exploding Mangoes” and “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti”) wrote a New York Times op-ed piece – published today – giving insight on the factors at play in…
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