Ramadan is special, and its breezes grace us every year we are granted life as an opportunity to fill our depleted spiritual stores. These precious nights are meant to make us rich of life, a richness which the Prophet ﷺ said is true richness[2]. Let’s not get caught up arguing over fiqhī differences and loathing the tarawih fundraising, lest we actualize the famous saying of the Arabs:

His conservative Christian family in Florida disdainfully called California the “Left Coast,” but Gregory Stevens was eager to embrace the Golden State. He’d grown up queer in a town where he believed everyone looked the same, where people referred to the non-Christian woman in the neighborhood as “the Jew,” where the khaki pants and polo shirts recently co-opted by white supremacists were an unofficial uniform. California, he imagined, would be different—a place where liberal ideas flourished and where people were willing to rally against inequality and injustice.
But Stevens, now 28, did not end up in the liberal den of San Francisco, the stoner paradise of Humboldt County, or the alternative-living community of Slab City, in the Sonoran Desert. After finishing seminary at the progressive Claremont School of Theology, in Southern California, Stevens got a job as a pastor in Palo Alto, one of the wealthiest communities in the country, where the median family income is around $163,000 and the median home price is over $3 million.

It may seem strange for an organization that claims to stand for the right to arm “good guys” against criminals to choose someone best known for illegally running guns and drugs on three continents. But in reality, North and the NRA are made for each other.
For one thing, he’s perfect for an organization that needs to step up its trolling game. The NRA relies on generating outrage in order to make its members feel under siege so they...buy more guns.

This blindness can be seen in his later academic work, which commonly conflated Muslims with Arabs, and religion with politics. The book that made Lewis’ popular reputation, “What Went Wrong?,” was originally subtitled “Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.” This was later changed, significantly, to “The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.” Suddenly a book about geopolitics became a book about a religion. Lewis treated the two interchangeably, as if the Middle East were synonymous with Islam, and vice versa.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center looks past the headlines that worry the established churches to ask what Western Europeans think about religion. The results, issued Tuesday (May 29), suggest a more nuanced picture.

Despite the region’s widespread secularization, 71 percent of the 24,599 adults Pew surveyed in 15 countries still identify as Christians, even if only 22 percent say they attend church at least once a month.

VIRAL CELL-phone videos of police officers and security guards brutalizing and murdering Black people have become so prevalent in recent years that the reality of racist police violence is impossible to ignore.
But this spring, cell phone video of a slightly different kind is revealing something else that’s impossible to ignore: White people calling the cops — or threatening to — on people of color...…..

These videos show — if there was any doubt left — that the problem with people of color in these places isn’t our behavior. It’s our very presence.

The religion of Islam was always a part of our upbringing. From religion classes on the weekends to Arabic classes after school four days a week; our culture and faith were an integral aspect of our upbringing. Modesty and ethics were not just about clothing, but about your faith, self-respect, and the way you communicate with and care for others.
My Choice, Alone
I have been wearing hijab (head scarf) since 1986. It has been a blessed 32 years. I wouldn’t have it any other way. The choice to wear hijab was mine, and mine alone.

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s warning that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom," the Poor People's Campaign launched its third week of action in cities nationwide on Tuesday with the aim of confronting the American war economy, which pours resources that could be used to provide healthcare and food to the poor at home into the killing of innocents abroad.