Approximately 1.8 billion people around the globe identify as Muslim today, which makes Islam the world’s second-largest world religion. This is a fact. At the same time, some on the far right in the United States deny that Islam is a real religion. Theologians of different stripes have made this…
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Over the past year, particularly after the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in Trump v. Hawaii (the travel ban case), many Americans have been asking, “Does religious freedom apply equally to all religious communities in America?” The matter again came to the fore with February and March cases involving death…
Read MoreOn February 3, 2017, Federal Judge the Honorable James L. Robart, granted a nationwide Temporary Restraining Order halting the enforcement of the provisions of President Trump’s executive order regarding immigration. The purpose of this article is to briefly discuss that decision, and what will happen next, from an academic perspective. Q: …
Read MoreIn early July this year, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak announced that two women had been appointed judges in the country’s Syariah Courts. One of two court systems in Malaysia, these courts rule on cases that are subject to sharia law, which is based on Islamic principles. Women’s groups, including Sisters in Islam (SIS), the group I belong to, hailed this as a long awaited move given the many problems that women face in the Syariah Courts, especially in matters related to the family. Long an advocate for justice and equality for Muslim women, SIS has been calling for female appointments since at least 1999.
Read MoreThe Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband, India’s largest and most influential madrasa, recently issued a fatwa declaring that appointing a woman as a judge was ‘near haram’, or, in other words, reprehensible.
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