Category: Society & Culture
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Muslim Scholars in Japan: Contemplating Islam in a Non-Muslim Society
I suspect most people are not familiar with Islamic history in East Asia, despite the region being home to one of the world’s oldest masjids, built in 7th or 8th century China. More recently, in 20th century Japan, the Kobe Masjid was built and mostly supported by foreign Tatar, Turkish, and South Asian Muslims. (You…
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Towards An Islamic Theory of Culture Part II: On Islamicates and Third Ways
The modern history of the Balkans region presents a great analogy for the West’s anxieties towards the Islamic world, an uncanny image of an Islamic heritage which the heirs of Christendom wished to forget. From the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, through to the rise and fall of Yugoslavia such an image…
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Towards An Islamic Theory of Culture Part I: On Culture & The West
While the term “cultural studies” would not emerge as a distinguished academic discipline until the 1960s (with the establishment of the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham), culture as an aspect of social life was first given serious consideration in the nineteenth century. During this period, many of the thinkers occupying the academic sphere of…
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The Male-Only Panel Fallacy
The issue of male-only panels is a new one. Outrage often seems manufactured: Muslim women are not “represented” in conferences, scholarly circles, panels, public events, speaking engagements, etc. This is considered a big problem, as it clearly serves as evidence of systematic misogyny, and Muslims will never progress unless it is resolved via a quota…
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Forgotten History: The Hamidiye Hijaz Railway – A Trans-Ottoman Railway
We always learn lessons from history; it acts as a guiding light whereby we make decisions based on our past mistakes and success. Therefore, it is important to learn history — especially one’s own. The collective amnesia of Islamic history has lead us to a stage where we are looking for answers on social media,…
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A Call to Action: Health Education Delivery in Islamic Schools is a Matter of Faith
Muslim youth of today face the worse of times: we are being raised in a culturally imperialistic society and are constantly faced with covert assaults on our iman (faith). This is not just confined to Muslim youth in the West, the monoculture has also seeped into the traditional Muslim world. Though parents who immigrated to…
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Healing Civilizational Diseases: The Importance of the Creative Minority
The study of the rise and fall of civilizations remains crucial to the preservation of societies; neglecting it can lead to our decline.
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Ms. Marvel and Muslim Representation
This critique is also not intended to be a chastisement of Kamala’s personal religiosity, nor of those who may resonate with her relationship (or lack thereof) with Islam. This is a call upon the western Muslim to think critically about what our goals are when it comes to this venue we are applauding. We need…
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On Being a Muslim Minority: Introducing Chinese Muslim Intellectual Jīn Tiānzhù
This article presents the introduction section of a book called 清真釈疑 Qīngzhēn shìyí (Eliminating Doubts Against Islam), written by Jīn Tiānzhù (金天柱). This is arguably the first book written about how minority Muslims living in East Asia have confronted misconceptions about Islam.
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Reflections and Advice From a Female Scholar
In 2011, I graduated as a female scholar (Alimah) alongside my 12 classmates. After completing the six year program at a traditional Dar-ul-Uloom (school for higher Islamic sciences), we returned to our hometowns, each pursuing our own unique path: some of us began to teach in the communities right away, some furthered their academic studies…