We are Muslim Americans. We are American Muslims. We live as your neighbors, friends, doctors, lawyers, police officers, soldiers, cab drivers, newspaper vendors, teammates, co-workers, and family — seamlessly and without conflict. We are fully immersed in the American mosaic, and we are proud.

Our Muslims forefathers have been here since the founding of this country and we proudly continue upholding our legacy of investing in and contributing to America’s successes from culture to politics, medicine to business, law enforcement to philanthropy.

As Muslims, we believe there is only one God, the God of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Noah, Moses, Joseph, Jesus and Muhammad (God’s peace be on them all).

There is no country on earth that can boast as wide a variety of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians and Atheists as America can. As citizens of this country we feel truly blessed to be able to worship as we please, whatever our beliefs. The diversity of the American landscape is mirrored within each of its faith communities; our individual uniqueness, talent and energy make us stronger as one nation.

Chris Stedman is an Interfaith and Community Service Fellow, Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and Managing Director, State of Formation at Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue. He is also a columnist for Huffington Post Religion and blogs at NonProphet Status. He tweets from@ChrisDStedman. The following has been reprinted by permission:

This year, two notable controversies have been brewing in Tennessee: a proposed bill that would forbid educators from using the word “gay” in the classroom, and a court battle to determine whether or not Islam is a religion. (The verdict? Islam is in fact a religion – for now, anyway.)

These two issues may seem unrelated, but I believe they’re actually symptoms of the same problem – our nation’s historical difficulty with those who are seen as disrupting the status quo. Intolerance against Muslims and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) individuals isn’t exclusive to Tennessee; with a fever-pitched debate over Park51 (or the “Ground Zero Mosque”) and headline-grabbing concerns about anti-LGBTQ bullying, these issues are a national concern.

Last month, I went to Tennessee for the first time. I spoke at Vanderbilt about the need for the religious and the nonreligious to find better ways of engaging with one another and identifying action-oriented shared values, sharing some of the experiences I write about in my forthcoming memoir, (F)a(i)theist: How One Atheist Learned to Challenge the Religious-Secular Divide, and Why Atheists and the Religious Must Work Together (working title, Beacon Press 2012).

Asma T. Uddin is a contributor to Tikkun Daily, but she’s more widely known as the founder of Altmuslimah.com. Since 2009, Altmuslimah.com has been fostering online dialogue on the highly emotional and difficult to define subject of gender roles in Islam. This online magazine-style blog “looks at the intersection of female and male sexuality and gender identity with society, politics, economics, and culture” and uses personal, individual narratives from contributors to do so.

Uddin is a Legal Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) and an international law attorney with The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, non-partisan, public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. But it was her own experience growing up as an American Muslim, and her own evolution as a Muslim woman which inspired her to create an online space for free expression and intelligent debate which welcomes Muslims, non-Muslims, men and women to participate.

In a recent interview, I spoke with Uddin about the impetus for founding Altmuslimah.com. “In many ways, Altmuslimah is a playing out of a lot of internal issues and struggles–spiritually and otherwise–I experienced back when I was in college,” she told me.

Up until she went to college Uddin had had a warm and fuzzy view of religion. Growing up as a Muslim in Miami, Florida she was fascinated by comparative religion at a young age and engaged enthusiastically with people about Islam. But after arriving on campus she found a great deal of conflict between American-born Muslims and those who were from other cultures who had vastly different ideas about Islam and women’s roles in the community.

Do you want to know more about Islam, but feel too shy to approach the stern-looking Muslims you see in Costco?

Are you tired of hearing about the world’s second-largest religion from hysterical media personalities who themselves have little or no firsthand experience on the subject?

Do you wish you could learn about Muslims without spending too much time or money on it?

There’s an app for that!

The new smartphone app called 365muslim was created specifically for a non-Muslim audience. It provides an interesting (and often entertaining) fact about Islam and Muslims each day for one year.

It’s purpose is to reach across the social barriers that still seem to be separating Muslims from mainstream American society and give simple, easy-to-verify information without proselytizing.

Currently 365muslim is available only for the iPhone, although an Android version is in the works. And yes, it’s FREE.

One of the global architects of terror responsible for inspiring the 9-11 tragedy was finally killed this week. Osama bin Laden, who violently hijacked the faith of 1.5 billion to rationalize his perverse criminal actions, is permanently seared into our collective consciousness as the 21st century boogeyman.

Sadly, in the eyes of many Americans, bin Laden has also become one of the most visible icons of “Islam” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Furthermore, 10 years after the 9-11 tragedy, nearly 60% of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim, and the favorability rating of Islam is at its lowest ebb.

Muslim Americans, like much of the world, still cannot escape the overbearing shadow of the fallen towers. There is a permanent fork in the timeline of the Muslim American narrative: Pre-911 and Post 9-11.

Pre 9-11, I was another awkward, well intentioned, multi-hyphenated Muslim American with exotic dietary habits who prayed 5 times a day and drank chai instead of alcohol during college.

Post 9-11, I received a special screening in front of my fellow passengers who boarded the plane to North Carolina while observing my Muslim security clearance zoo exhibit.

I felt like smoking a cigarette and spouting a witty barb after my intimate encounter with the TSA.

The fires of democracy continue to burn brightly in Wisconsin.

With a Smile, Photo by Rebecca Congo

Recall campaigns are racing along, and a recent community meeting in Milwaukee, usually a sleepy, ill-attended affair, boasted several hundred attendants. When their representative, Chris Larson, one of the “Wisconsin 14″ showed up, they jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Neighborhood listservs are boiling with activity.

Photo of and by Rebecca Congo+Friend

On Facebook and in a thousand union and church meetings, people solidify their connections with each other and their commitment to recover and strengthen our precious democracy.

Meaningful Individual Acts, Meaningful Collective Acts

April 4^th and 5^th, there were dozens of opportunities to participate in democracy both publicly and privately. At least five activities were planned for the South Bay (Please comment and post photos if you attended one of these.)

Click on the image for more photos (from the BBC)

From the Jerusalem Post yesterday:

A woman was killed and 39 people were wounded on Wednesday afternoon when a bag exploded next to a bus stop across the street from the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Ha’uma), near the capital’s western entrance.
It was the first serious terrorist bombing in the city since 2004, and for many residents it brought back terrible memories of the second intifada.

We are grateful to have received this press release from our friends at the World Muslim Congress (and while we are about it, we include below their last week’s condemnation of the attack on Michael Lerner’s home):

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

PRESS RELEASE

March 23, 2011, Dallas, Texas

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

The world Muslim Congress strongly condemns the attack on the bus in Jerusalem as well as the resumption of the rocket attacks on the civilian population. We pray for God’s blessing for the victims and their families.

Eventually, this conflict engulfed the French Cistercian Trappist monastery situated in a remote village, where its monks were much loved by their Muslim-Arab neighbors. They incorporated them into their everyday lives, even inviting them to family weddings and other life-cycle events.

Michael Lonsdale, the dignified bilingual French actor, plays Luc, the elderly monk and physician who ran a much-needed medical clinic. From the vantage point of his once secular life, Luc is charmingly depicted providing advice on love to a village girl who tends the abbey grounds and seeks out his wisdom.

Credit: Flickrcc/marcin wojcik

Watching NYC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center succumb to pressure to cancel a kick-off party for Israeli Apartheid Week, I feel compelled to write an epilogue to my recent post on Pinkwashing.

I am reminded once again that we must be vigilant in refusing to allow queer liberation to be pitted against Palestinian liberation because as we know from our queer Palestinian colleagues, the two struggles are intertwined.

On February 22^nd, Michael Lucas, a right wing Advocate columnist and gay porn entrepreneur, issued a press release calling on the LGBT center to cancel the scheduled “Party to End Apartheid,” which he called anti-Semitic. He threatened to “organize a boycott that would certainly involve some of the Center’s most generous donors.” Infamous for his attacks against Islam, Lucas argued that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death…” Relying on traditional Pinkwashing tactics, Lucas positioned Israel as a liberal democracy in opposition to its backwards and homophobic “enemies.”

Just a few hours later, the LGBT center announced it would cancel the event and bar its sponsors from meeting at the Center in the future. The Center’s executive director Glennda Testone issued a brief statement claiming, “We have determined that this event is not appropriate to be held at our LGBT Community Center, which is a safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals.”

This is the first post in an exclusive Tikkun Daily series highlighting Muslim activists, entrepreneurs and artists who are making waves online.

Fatemeh Fakhraie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Muslimah Media Watch, the premiere website for Muslim women to discuss media images of themselves since 2007. In 2009, Fakhraie published her first book, Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Hijab Styles in Urban Iranian Women, a textbook version of her master’s thesis. In addition to blogging at Muslimah Media Watch, she also contributes to Bitch Magazine, Racialicious, AltMuslimah, and her own eponymous blog.

In an interview this month, I asked Fakhraie about Muslimah Media Watch and what motivated her to launch a site which is truly peerless.

“I hated everything I saw about Muslim women in mainstream media, and didn’t see myself in traditional feminist media,” she explained. “So I made a place for myself and women like me. In U.S. media, Muslim women are much more visible and even welcomed than we were when I started. But I think that there are still huge problems with that visibility: a lot of books and movies about Muslim women still fall into one stereotype or another, and a fair amount of news articles that feature Muslim women are reductive or coddling – I see so many articles that simply just pat Muslim women on the head for doing stuff that isn’t in itself exceptional, but seems like such a big deal for a Muslim woman to do.”

by Akile Kabir

Al Kahf

To see more of Davi Barker’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery and the artist’s website.

The clarity of composition and richness of color in Davi Barker’s work were what struck me first. Then, as I began to reflect on his art, I noticed the serenity of his paintings, which juxtapose Islamic calligraphy and sites with beautiful, surreal panoramas. The paintings featured in Barker’s exhibit on Tikkun Daily are products of his experimentation with a combination of digital and fine art mediums. The scenes of nature or Islamic architecture may appear to be realistic landscapes or still lifes, but they also have a supernatural quality. Take for instance, the onion-shaped domes that dramatically emerge against cloudy skies, or the pristine smoothness of sand dunes, warmly bathed in sunlight. Each painting possesses a quality of light, even in darker settings, whether it is reflected on the surface of the water in Al Kahf or through the ominous clouds and birds encircling the Kaaba. In fact, the subjects featured in these paintings, such as the Kaaba on a bed of glass, are first arranged from digital photographs on the computer after which Barker produces the images in paint, thereby creating these fantastical compositions.

The past few months I had the opportunity to participate in a short documentary project about Muslim women. Yasmin Diallo Turk, a graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas invited me to be featured along with a couple other women from Austin’s diverse Muslim community. It was an honor to work with her and to have my family involved.  I hope you’ll enjoy our efforts:

Muslim Women Do That

If you are interested in supporting a full length feature based on this short film please see the Kickstarter page.

AAIM Meeting

As I discussed in a previous post, I recently moved to Austin Texas and started sampling some of the local community events here. This past week I attended my second meeting of the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries (AAIM). The meeting was organized as a collection of small table discussion groups. The topics for the evening were the Cordoba Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero in NY City, and how to respond to the fear of Islam surfacing in our society.

First, some general observations about the people I talked to there. Many of them were not presently part of any religious church or organization. They attended this interfaith dialogue because they felt a longing for the warmth and sharing that took place at an event like this. Several people mentioned that they viewed participating in this type of respectful interfaith dialogue as a very meaningful spiritual practice for them.

Many people felt that the emotional controversy over the Islamic Cultural Center is starting to wane. Any news story has a natural lifetime for remaining on the front pages before starting to fade from the public interest. This story, however, seemed fade away faster than one would expect given the strong emotions surrounding it. Why might that be happening?

Last week I attended an interfaith dialogue event where I sat at one of 20 round tables with six other deliberately diverse people and carried on a moderated discussion about the current state of Islamophobia in the U.S.

It was a robust and lively conversation, and I felt as though the subject was treated with sincere concern for both America’s fears and the undue pressure being placed upon the average American Muslim citizen by those who cannot differentiate between extremists and the greater Muslim population.

But at one point during the discussion, the moderator had the floor and she asked me a question that made me stop and think hard: “What question do you wish people would ask you about Islam?”

Immediately I thought of a long list of questions I’d been asked about my religion in the past ten years. There have been a lot, but there’s one question I never get asked:

What do I love about Islam?

The GOATMILK DEBATES continue…

The motion:“Temporary Marriage is a valid option for Muslims in the modern age”

AGAINST THE MOTION: “Sigheh Marriage [Temporary Marriage or Muta'a] is Sex for Hire”

Fatemeh Fakhraie

I support any way that two consenting adults can safely get it on. And so I don’t think sigheh marriage (temporary marriage also referred to asmut’a, or pleasure, marriage) is a bad idea.

In a magical, lollipop-and-rainbows land.

But in the reality where we all live? No. It’s a terrible idea.

See, in magical Lollipop Rainbow Land, men and women are equal. Sexuality is something between autonomous people who are educated enough to make intelligent decisions about their sex lives. Gender roles aren’t rigidly ascribed or enforced, and no importance is placed on virginity. Everyone respects each other and each other’s choices in this fantastical place. Sigheh marriage would be a wonderful thing in Lollipop Rainbow Land.

But, as this grumpy feminist is constantly reminded, we do not live in Lollipop Rainbow Land. We live in a place and time where women are not seen as equals and are still exploited physically, economically, sexually, etc. In this context, sigheh marriage is a sanctioned path to female exploitation – and thus, in my book, a terrible idea.

To be upfront, I am an American Iranian Muslim who comes from the Shi’a tradition. Sigheh is a largely Shi’a practice, and the vast majority of my knowledge on it comes from the Iranian context. So that’s where I’m writing from today.

This week a friend of mine forwarded me an email containing the following sermon which was given this past Yom Kippur by the Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio. Although I have never had the opportunity to meet Rabbi Stahl in person, I contacted him and he was kind enough to allow me to share his words here on Tikkun Daily.

As a Muslim my heart is warmed and my spirit lifted by his empathy and genuine concern for those of us who are suffering under the latest wave of paranoia and ignorance to wash over the American psyche.

September 18, 2010- Yom Kippur Morning

This morning, our Reform Torah portion is different from the one our Conservative and Orthodox co-religionists read. Ours comes from the book of Deuteronomy. Theirs comes from Leviticus. In that portion, we learn about an exotic ritual. On the day of Yom Kippur, the High Priest took two male goats and placed lots upon them.

One lot was marked: “For the Lord.” The other lot was marked: “For Azalzel.” Azalzel was probably some dreaded demonic figure living in the desert. The High Priest sacrificed the goat designated for the Lord. He sent the other goat, designated for Azalzel, into the desert. That goat was to carry away his own sins, as well as the sins of the people.

There are two very important aspects to the holy month of Ramadhan:

First, it was during this month that God revealed the opening of the Qur’an to a simple merchant in 7th century Arabia. Muhammad was given the prophet-hood and the religion of Islam was born setting off a chain of events that changed the world forever. This month is holy to us because it reminds us of the most precious gift of the Qur’an and the thrilling story of the birth of our ummah.

But the other important aspect of Ramadhan has to do with social justice. An orphan himself, Muhammad was sensitive to the needs of those who didn’t have all the advantages of pre-Islamic Arabian society. After he established a community of Muslims, it was decreed that this holy month would be one of fasting and charity. Thus, we are reminded during Ramadan that the very foundation of our religion is intimately tied to our ability to empathize with and relieve the distress of the less fortunate among us.

This is important for all Muslims to realize, because the disparity between the rich and the poor in the world today is something we cannot in good faith ignore. A very small percentage of the planet holds the majority of its wealth (and if you are reading this it is almost certain that you are among them).

Giving charity isn’t just about writing a check to your favorite non-profit organization in order to “increase your rewards” during the holy month. It’s not about sponsoring an iftaar at the masjid. It’s not about handing out alms to panhandlers. It isn’t about sleeping through the day to gorge yourself on rich food at night, or throwing lavish parties for your friends. True charity is about looking after the well-being of the disadvantaged throughout the year, and making sure they have the tools they need to improve their situation when they need them.

We fast each day during the month in order to remind ourselves that this state of discomfort is a way of life for many. But if the discipline of fasting doesn’t inspire us to long-lasting action, what good is it? While Ramadhan is a time to renew our focus on charity and social justice, it cannot be the beginning and end of our efforts. Charity and good stewardship is a year-round obligation.

The old saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life,” illustrates this idea. Our efforts toward charity should not just be about making sure the poor have good meal during Ramadhan or new clothes to wear on Eid, but in creating institutions and programs for the poor which will empower, educate and inspire them forever.

Rabbi Michael Lerner has helped lead a growing chorus of American rabbis who are voicing their support for the Park51 Islamic community center (often mislabeled the “Ground Zero Mosque”) in Lower Manhattan. His video of support, featured here, is a call for people of all traditions to recognize the holiness in each other. It also touches on the singular hope that Americans have of honoring each other’s freedoms and affirming each other’s beliefs.

Please join Rabbi Lerner in doing the same! Whether you are a rabbi or a nun, a lay leader or proud humanist, the need to protect religious freedom in America has never been more important. Religious Freedom USA, the organization that first featured Rabbi Lerner’s video, is quickly becoming an interfaith movement to support of Park51 as a praiseworthy center that must be protected as an expression of religious freedom.

Religious Freedom USA, of which I am proud to be a founding member, has started a petition in support of Park51. It affirms,

Since the first pilgrims reached the shores of Plymouth, America has shone as a beacon of religious freedom, illuminating the path to liberty for the oppressed from every land, in every generation. Extreme criticism of the proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan is an affront to the religious freedom that our Founding Fathers fought to secure. We stand by our belief in freedom of worship and freedom of expression and consider the Park51 community center to be an expression of both. We are proud to unite behind it as a symbol of religious freedom.

Join the movement. Religious freedom is either guaranteed to all or safe for none. It is a cause vital to the entire Tikkun community, as Rabbi Lerner has made so tremendously clear.

[To learn more about this topic, check out Rabbi Lerner's post on the ADL's opposition to the mosque and Josh Stanton's previous post on the controversy.]

Ustad Ghulam Farid Nizami has released a new album entitled Flowers of the Heart, offering western ears a small window into the heart and soul of the subcontinent.

Having left Islamabad two years ago to teach at the University of Texas on a Fullbright Scholarship, he was able to gain asylum in the U.S. for himself and his family just this year. Now living in Austin, Texas he is in the process of establishing a school of music.

Nizami is a 17th generation musician and has mastered the sitar, tabla, harmonium and his own exquisitely flexible voice. On Flowers of the Heart, Nizami presents a variety of songs ranging from traditional rags, Rajasthani folk songs, and even a track containing instructional tabla variations.

Nizami’s music is deeply rooted in his Sufi beliefs. Mesmerizing, passionate, and spiritually ecstatic, the songs on this disc will reverberate with your soul even if you’ve never experienced this type of music before.

Nizami is available for performances in communities around the U.S. You may hear samplings from Flowers of the Heart on his official website, and can buy the album at cdbaby or digstation.