City of Brass

in partnership with Shahed Amanullah of altmuslim.com, I am pleased to announce that the 6th Annual Brass Crescent Awards are now underway! What are the Brass Crescent Awards? They are named for the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights. Today, the Islamsphere is forging a new synthesis of Islam and modernity, and…

Apologies for my long hiatus here – I spent the last third of Ramadan and Eid day (which we observed on Thursday) in Houston with family, blissfully immersing myself in the rhythms of worship. I’d already decided I wouldn’t have anything more to say about the Park51 project, and didn’t have much to say about…

My friend Wajahat Ali is hosting the GOATMILK DEBATE series, and asked me to contribute against the motion that “muslims should adopt monsighting for Ramadan”. The initial entry, in favor of the motion, was posted earlier by Irfan Rydhan and is re-posted at Patheos. Below is my response, cross-posted at GOATMILK. My brother Irfan Rydhan…

Depending on your reckoning, Ramadan is now about a third of the way complete. The fasting tends to get easier over the course of the month, because we physically acclimate to the routine, and also because the days get somewhat shorter as we progress. However, the fact that the Islamic months are shorter (based on…

I really don’t have anything left to say about Park51, barring any new developments (pun intended). But the repeated phrase “mosque at Ground Zero” was ringing familiar to me for some reason, and I just realized why – this old article from December 2001 in Slate, about the architecture of the World Trade Center, and…

The controversy over Park51 has long since passed the realm of tragedy and now is well into farce. This story has displaced far more pressing issues like the floods in Pakistan, the lingering environmental disaster in the Gulf, and of course the economic crisis which will still be the primary issue driving the November elections.…

I’ve been visiting my parents this weekend in Chicago and immersing myself in Ramadan at our masjid – there’s a serenity and a rigour to arriving at the masjid two hours prior to sunset, reading the Qur’an, engaging in communal recitation of sipara (chapters), and then offering the maghrib (sunset) salaat with the imam leading…

Two American muslims, Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq, have begun a 30-day roadtrip across America, in a goal of visiting 30 mosques in 30 days in 30 states during Ramadan. They just started since yesterday was day 1 of Ramadan for most muslim communities – beginning their journey in New York (here’s their road map).…

Just in time for Ramadan – next week, Whole Foods will be carrying the new Saffron Road line of certified halal food products! You can even get a coupon for a free entree online. The entrees include chicken biryani, chicken tikka masala, lamb saag, and lamb vindaloo (obviously a south asian palette). The company behind…

This guest post is an excerpt from the memoir, The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson. THE BUTTERFLY MOSQUE A Memoir by G. Willow Wilson PROLOGUE In the upper reaches of the Zagros Mountains, the air changed. The high altitude opened it, cleared it of the dust of the valleys, and made it sing a…

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