My first trip to Timbuktu occurred in 2003, long before this current conflict. I arrived in Timbuktu and the air emitted a certain respect for history. The architectural structure reminded me that I was in the midst of a city of knowledge that had existed for hundreds of years.
A good friend of mine and I were in a heated debate at Starbucksānaturallyāover whether or not itās possible to reconcile Islam with the LGBTQ c...
When the trumped-up passions of "Innocence of Muslims" cool, burnt-out buildings will be repaired, diplomatic dances will reboot. But who will stand up for the freedom to disbelieve, to criticize and to mock?
Unlike Him, we do not have infinite capacity. We are failed deities. We try and we stumble, and we have few resources to fall back on. So we end up as I did, prostrated pathetically after the prayer, tears streaming from my cheeks.
Dutch right-wing politician and staunch critic of Islamic religion, Geert Wilders spoke at at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver last weekend i...
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ā Construction is continuing on a mosque as attorneys debate a judge's ruling that said local officials did not give the public eno...
There is a huge presence of apathy and complacency in the land, with people ignoring abuses of civil liberties as long as it is happening to the "other."
In the decade since 9/11, American Muslims and mosques have come under a close lens, from congressional hearings on radicalization to campaigns agains...
Throughout our history, unpopular groups have been targeted for the public's wrath in difficult times. Demagogues like King have been only too anxious to steer and cheer on this wrath.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced support for a law that would ban mosques from using loudspeaker systems to call people to prayer....
The year was 1978. Bob Marley convinced warring Jamaican factions to shake hands. China lifted a ban on the works of Shakespeare. Pete Rose logged his...
A mosque is worth only as much as the people inside it. It's the communities that give the mosque meaning and weight. How we serve our Creator and our fellow neighbors is ultimately reflected in the spirit of each and every mosque.
ROSEMONT, Ill. -- If Muslims want to improve their image America, they have to get involved in their communities and proactively talk Islam before con...
The reasons for New York Republican Rep. Peter King's insistence on holding a series of controversial hearings about the alleged growth of radical Isl...
As American politicians debate whether violent rhetoric contributed to the attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a similar debate is underway in Saudi Arabia.
One of the biggest threats to the American gift is the notion that the exercise and adherents of some faiths are worthy of the equal protection of our laws, while other "illegitimate" faiths are not.
With mosques functioning as the local centers of Islamic faith and the object of renewed Western suspicion, it is undeniable that mosques also help keep alive the memory of the divide of civilizations that once rent the world irreparably in two.
Even when Americans began to travel to Muslim lands, from the start they displayed a more diverse response to Islam and its mosques, which over the course of a century graduated from the crude to the reverent.
Compared to the European writers discovering the great mosques of Islam for the first time, the mention of mosques is more muted and void of romance to the Muslim secularists inured to them from birth.
For the last three centuries, it's been an aesthetic and cultural conversion that keeps the secular minds of the West returning to the sacred architecture of Islam.