Fatwas pending 
Thursday, September 02, 2010 | 23 Ramadan 1431  
Ali Eteraz
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Ali Eteraz
Contributor Ali Eteraz is a writer living in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a columnist for The News (Pakistan) and a frequent contributor to various international periodicals. He contributes to the Huffington Post and the Guardian's Comment is Free, the largest American and British political blogs respectively. His website is www.alieteraz.com.

ARTICLES BY ALI ETERAZ

  Pakistan  
State-sponsored Sufism
After years of bemoaning official Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabism, and condemning official Iranian sponsorship of milleniarian Islam, we are now being asked to celebrate a state-sponsored brand of Islam in Pakistan. Not only is this unprincipled - it is going to backfire. (11 comments)

  Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad  
An imam who can
The founder of the Cambridge Muslim College, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, looks likely to create a positive, British culture among young followers of Islam. Too bad so few people know about him. (28 comments)

  Inauguration day  
Face to faith
Quite like the hajj - where wealthy Muslims discover their piety in five-star hotels while everyone else stays in a tent city - the inauguration also offers an insight into inequality. (7 comments)

  US Elections  
Why Muslims shouldn’t support Ron Paul
Muslim groups, mosques, activist communities and intellectuals should get off their Ron Paul kick and enter the reality-based community. (22 comments)

  Catholic-Muslim relations  
The Pope offers lessons for Islamic reform
The Pope is one of the few Western leaders who is recognized as legitimate by Muslims. If he would honestly discuss the the evolution of his views on Islam, Muslims would learn from it (6 comments)

  Tariq Ramadan  
The state of Islamic reform in the West
Consider, then, the irony: reformers which did not alienate the Muslim community were alienated by the media; reformers which did alienate the Muslim community were embraced by the media. (4 comments)

  Muslim Movements  
The death of “progressive Islam”
At the end of the day, all practicing Muslims turn to some kind of juridical authority. The fact that the Progressives did not have one to offer was a great cause of concern for me. (82 comments)

  Occupation and Insurgency  
Western Muslim opinion on the war in Iraq
We Western Muslims can oppose the American occupation, but we also have to oppose the way the insurgents are brutalizing and defiling life and human dignity. (1 comment)

  Novel "Master of the Jinn"  
An unearthly Sufi novel
Irving Karchmar's debut Sufi novel, "Master of the Jinn", heralds the arrival of a fresh literary voice to Islam and America. It also signals the revival of Sufism. (2 comments)

  Musical Artists Niyaz  
The Sufi electronica of Niyaz: Music to smash idols
In the Sufi-inspired music of Niyaz, the serenity of Islamic mysticism exists even if the words were to disappear and only the voice were to remain. (5 comments)


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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
altmuslim this week - august 23, 2010 - This week, is there a connection between the heated rhetoric over Park51 and increased hate crimes against Muslims? Also, parallel struggles against anti-Muslim protests in Bradford, England and the innovation (and integration) on display in the 30 Mosques, 30 States and 30 Nights, 30 Grants projects.
ASIDES
editor's blog
How Miss USA will push the secret Muslim agenda - A leaked memo confirms a nefarious plot to infiltrate America using the one weapon we can't resist: Total hotness. (May 17, 2010)

South Park: The controversy continues - In a special for Salon.com, our Associate Editor Wajahat Ali offers his take on the controversy over South Park. If you think South Park's Muslim brouhaha was messy, you should see what's going on in the neighboring town of East Park. (April 28, 2010)

CONTRIBUTORS

PODCASTS
altmuslim review 033 - We're baaaaack! We speak about the ongoing controversy over Park51 and what means for the future of lower Manhattan. Also, a discussion with Farhad Chowdhury of the M100 Foundation, which seeks to change the way Muslims pay zakat (August 13, 2010)

altmuslim review 032 - Muslim writers everywhere! We speak about the new wave of Western Muslim literature and interview two authors with recently released books. Our own Irfan Yusuf talks about his memoir, Once Were Radicals and Reza Aslan tells us more about his second book, How to Win a Cosmic War (June 11, 2009)

ELSEWHERE
It's the occupation, stupid, Wajahat Ali, Salon.com, June 4, 2010

Sex and the City 2's stunning Muslim clichés, Wajahat Ali, Salon.com, May 28, 2010

Draw Muhammad Day: Collectively Punishing Muslim Americans, Shahed Amanullah, Huffington Post, May 25, 2010

Shahed will be a guest on the BBC World Service's World, Have Your Say discussing the proposed French ban on niqab (and fines for husbands who compel their wives to wear them) on May 18, 2010.

Even Controversial Views Should Be Protected by Freedom of Speech, Asma Uddin, The Huffington Post, May 7, 2010.

What I understand about Faisal Shahzad, Wajahat Ali, Salon.com, May 6, 2010

No freak out about South Park, Zahed Amanullah, The Guardian, Comment is Free, April 23, 2010.

Shahed will be a guest on the BBC World Service's World, Have Your Say discussing the South Park controversy along with Zarqa Nawaz (Little Mosque on the Prairie) and other guests on April 22, 2010.

Shahed will be a guest on NPR's State of Belief discussing Barack Obama's outreach to the Muslim world, April 17, 2010.

Zahed will be attending a panel discussion entitled "Are Islam and Free Speech Compatible?" in London, England on Friday, March 26, 2010 sponsored by The City Circle. He will be accompanied by Riazat Butt (The Guardian), Hamid Khan (Consultant in Offender and Youth Development), Abu Muntasir (JIMAS), and Dr Usama Hasan.

'Jihad Jane': not the usual suspect, Wajahat Ali, The Guardian, Comment is Free, March 18, 2010.

Al-Awlaki, a new public enemy, Zahed Amanullah, The Guardian, Comment is Free, December 30, 2009.

Islamophonic: Review of the year, Riazat Butt, Zahed Amanullah and David Shariatmadari, Cif Belief (The Guardian), December 18, 2009.

Fort Hood has enough victims already, Wajahat Ali, Comment is Free (The Guardian), November 6, 2009

The pitfalls of filming Muhammad, Shahed Amanullah, The Guardian, Comment is Free, November 4, 2009.

Children of Dust (published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins), the first book by longtime altmuslim.com contributor Ali Eteraz, is released in the US, Canada, and the UK on October 13, 2009.

Shahed will be attending the m100 Sansoucci Colloquium in Potsdam, Germany, September 14-16, 2009. He will be moderating a panel discussion on the Danish cartoon crisis with Denis MacShane MP, Jasim Al-Azzawi (Al Jazeera English), and Flemming Rose (Jyllands Posten).

Associate Editor Wajahat Ali's play "The Domestic Crusaders" is having its premiere at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, NY, September 11, 2009. The play will continue through Sunday, October 11, 2009.

Shahed will be moderating or participating in three panel discussions at the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention, including Muslim Journalists: The View from the Inside, Supporting Social Entrepreneurs and Civic Leaders, and Blogistan: Muslim Americans on the Web in Washington, DC, July 3-6, 2009.

State-sponsored Sufism, Ali Eteraz, Foreign Policy, June 10, 2009.

IN THE NEWS
Helping U.S. reach out to young Muslims worldwide - Soon after Farah Pandith was named last year as the State Department's first special representative to Muslim communities, she sat down with the editor of an independent Muslim website for her first official interview. Altmuslim.com, a forum for opinion and analysis about current issues facing Muslims, was a fitting choice. Pandith has said a strong focus of her work is to reach out to younger Muslims around the world, often those most likely to use the Internet for news and networking. (June 5, 2010)

Censorship is in the ascendant - Zahed Amanullah, associate editor of altmuslim.com, has argued in a national newspaper blog that, since the warning came from an unrepresentative group, the media interest was not justified. As for events of the past – the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the Danish cartoons, the murder of van Gogh – they were "three incidents over a 20-year period from amongst 1.6 billion people. These things do happen. But we all need a bit of perspective." (April 30, 2010)

Muslims say new security rules unfair, ineffective - ''Muslims are doing their duty. Muslim parents are being attentive. It's the TSA that's not being attentive. It's the TSA that's not doing its duty," said Shahed Amanullah, an editor at the Web site altmuslim.com. "There's nothing more that Muslims can do than turn in their own families." (January 7, 2010)

US Muslims & media… Lost love - "We have a big problem; it’s that other people are shaping the story about us," Shahed Amanullah, editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com, told IslamOnline.net. (December 16, 2009)

Moves to Seize Mosques Spark Outrage - "I'm extremely skeptical that the link between these mosques and this organization is so strong as to merit the seizing of a considerable amount of assets that do a lot of good for the Muslim community," says Shahed Amanullah, a prominent Muslim blogger based in Austin. "The government better be prepared to make a very good case, because this is unprecedented." (November 17, 2009)

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