Young US Muslims rediscover identity via underground book, Islamic Culture, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Culture

Young US Muslims rediscover identity via underground book

By Christopher Maag

The novel is The Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims, said Carl W Ernst, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

Now the underground success of Muslim punk has resulted in a low-budget independent film based on the book.

A group of punk artists living in a communal house in Cleveland called the Tower of Treason offered the house as the set for the movie.. The movie will be released next year, said Eyad Zahra, the director.Filming took place in October, and the movie will be released next year, said Eyad Zahra, the director.

"To see these characters that used to live only inside my head out here walking around, and to think of all these kids living out parts of the book, it's totally surreal," Muhammad Knight, 31, said as he roamed the movie set.

The novel's title combines “taqwa”, the Arabic word for "piety," with "hardcore," which is used to describe many genres of angry Western music.

http://newageislam.com/young-us-muslims-rediscover-identity-via-underground-book/islamic-culture/d/1086

Jihad: Holy or Unholy War? Asks John L. Esposito, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Jihad: Holy or Unholy War? Asks John L. Esposito

John L. Esposito

The importance of jihad is rooted in the Quran’s command to “struggle or exert” (the literal meaning of the word jihad) oneself in the path of God. The Quranic teachings have been of essential significance to Muslim self-understanding, piety, mobilization, expansion and defense. Jihad as struggle pertains to the difficulty and complexity of living a good life: struggling against the evil in oneself – to be virtuous and moral, making a serious effort to do good works and help to reform society. Depending on the circumstances in which one lives, it also can mean fighting injustice and oppression, spreading and defending Islam and creating a just society through preaching, teaching and, if necessary, armed struggle or holy war.

The two broad meanings of jihad, non-violent and violent, are contrasted in a well-known Prophetic tradition. Muslim tradition reports that, when Muhammad returned from battle, he told his followers “We return from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.” The greater jihad is the more difficult and more important struggle against one’s ego, selfishness, greed, and evil.

Jihad is a concept with multiple meanings, used and abused throughout Islamic history. Although it has always been an important part of the Islamic tradition, in recent years some Muslims have maintained that jihad is a universal religious obligation for all true Muslims to join the jihad to promote a global Islamic revolution.

http://newageislam.com/jihad--holy-or-unholy-war?-asks-john-l.-esposito/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1154

Destroy Lashkar Camps: Why Indian Muslims are an existential threat to Pakistan?, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Destroy Lashkar Camps: Why Indian Muslims are an existential threat to Pakistan?

The Pakistani state, it must be noted, has taken no action whatsoever against this heinous propaganda, and elements of the ISI are said to be in cahoots with the Lashkar and other such hate-driven self-styled Islamist groups in the country. In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and when asked what action Pakistan had taken against the Lashkar, the Pakistani President hurriedly shrugged off the question by claiming that the Lashkar had been 'banned'. If that is indeed the case—which it is obviously not—then how does Mr. Zardari explain the fact that, as the Lashkar's official Urdu website itself announces, on the 29th of November the Lashkar's supremo Hafiz Muhammad Saeed addressed what it termed a 'mammoth' convention at 'New Saeedabad' (a locality named after him?), organized by the Sindh unit of the Markaz Dawat ul-Irshad (the 'religious' and political wing of the Lashkar). It was held, of all places, in the premises of the local Government Degree College. The Lashkar's website is replete with news about the whirlwind tours of Saeed and his cronies across the country, delivering rabble-rousing speeches, thundering against India and non-Muslims in general. And the outfit, Mr. Zardari wants us to believe, is 'banned'.

http://newageislam.com/destroy-lashkar-camps--why-indian-muslims-are-an-existential-threat-to-pakistan?---/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/1042

Reinterpreting the Quran in order to develop more inclusive, generally equitable laws, Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam

Reinterpreting the Quran in order to develop more inclusive, generally equitable laws

As Ms. Wadud likes to point out, her life did not begin with the March prayer. Born Mary Teasley, she grew up in Washington, D.C., one of eight children. Her father was a Methodist minister; everyone called him "The Rev." The family didn't have much money. When she was in middle school, a counselor noticed that, while her grades were mediocre, her standardized test scores were excellent. The counselor arranged for her to attend a better public school in Massachusetts, where she excelled academically and was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first person in her family to attend college.

She converted to Islam as an undergraduate in the early 1970s. For Ms. Wadud, who is African-American, it was the emphasis on justice that she says first attracted her to the faith. She chose the name Amina after the mother of Muhammad and the last name Wadud, which means "loving."

Not long after her conversion, Ms. Wadud wrote her first paper on women and Islam, in which she concluded that "everything was hunky-dory," she recalls. She would later revise that assessment. By the time she entered graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor she had become deeply distressed at how the Muslim tradition often depicted women as inferior to men. She remembers, for example, hearing Muslims argue that women in Islam should not be allowed to drive. "Is that right?" she asked herself.

http://newageislam.com/reinterpreting-the-quran-in-order-to-develop-more-inclusive,-generally-equitable-laws--/ijtihad,-rethinking-islam/d/889