Eid Al-Adha Announced
(Oct 27, 2011) The
Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) has announced the official date for Eid
al-Adha and it will be on Sunday, November 6, 2011. This means that tomorrow, Friday October 28,
2011 is the first day of Dhul Hijjah and the ten most blessed days of the year.
Regarding the determination of the date of Eid, ISNA follows
the decision of the FCNA to determine the date for both Eid Al-Fitr and Eid
Al-Adha. In the case of Eid Al-Adha, the Fiqh Council of North America (and
ISNA) uses the date determined by the Hajj authorities. The official date was announced by the Hajj
Authorities today and will be Sunday, November 6, 2011.
MORE INFORMATION: For more information on the way in which
the date for Eid al-Adha is determined, please read this short article written
by Dr. Zulfiqar A. Shah of FCNA.
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Posted on Friday, October 28, 2011
Eid ul-Fitr
Eid-ul-Fitr Celebration at The Islamic Academy of Columbia, SC
30 August 2011
This community milestone is
merely a reflection of the continued efforts of Imam Shaheed; also a
contract Imam on Fort Jackson, and Chaplain (MAJ) Abdullah Hulwe, Muslim
chaplain currently assigned to Fort Jackson. These two Muslim leaders
have worked closely together during this past year, attending to the
religious needs of the Muslims Soldiers and Family members on Fort Jackson.
Imam Shaheed, a student and follower of the late Imam W. Deen Mohammed,
has worked continuously in the Muslim community throughout
the greater Southeastern region of the U.S. for well over 30 years. I
recall him mentioning on several occasions in the past, "we are long
past due, the Muslims here in Columbia, being more in unison with one
another.” This year’s Eid celebration is as good a beginning in that direction
as we’ll find during any time of the year.
InshaAllah, these two communities will serve as a good and ongoing
example of what right looks like throughout the entire Muslim community in
America, not only during the Eid celebrations, but throughout the entire year.
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Posted on Friday, September 09, 2011
Chaplaincy Session Times at the Convention
Session Times at the 48th Annual ISNA Convention
Friday July 1, 2011
4:45 – 6:15 PM Session 1C Room 33
Muslim Chaplains and Lay Leadership:
The Challenges and Opportunities of Filling the
Void of Religious Leadership
Part one of this session will explore some of the issues and challenges that confront the Muslim community’s ability to provide competent, professional, religious institutions, in the absence of Chaplains or Imams primarily where Muslims co-exist as leadership to patients, inmates, military personnel, and student status.
In part two of this session, Dr. Muhammad Mansur Ali, a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, will present a power point presentation on a brief historic account of Muslim Chaplaincy in the UK and discuss his research on Muslim Chaplaincy using qualitative methods, i.e. focus groups and surveys.
Speakers: Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, Mansur Ali, Omer Bajwa
Moderator: Refat Abukhdeir
Saturday July 2, 2011
10:00 – 11:15 AM Session 4E Room 33
Muslim Women and Chaplaincy: Searching for Reform
This session will examine the various issues and concerns facing Muslim women currently serving or those wanting to serve in the role as pastoral care service providers or Chaplains in institutions such as prisons, armed services, colleges, and healthcare settings.
Speakers: Shareda Hosein, Mumina Kowalski
Moderator: Khadijah Muhammad
Sunday July 3, 2011
10:00 – 11:30 AM Session 12H Room 33
Establishing Best Practices for Muslims in a
Changing Environment
This session will examine the importance of providing broad-based institutional support, through such methods as participating in inter/intra-faith dialogu. Therefore providing consultation and the correct theological guidance to those individuals who may be attracted to distorted views of religion, pastoral counseling services to multiple population and assisting Muslims and non-Muslims who are often curious and simply interested in distinguishing right from wrong as related to fundamental religious practices.
Speakers: Mohamed Magid, Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad
Moderator: Ronald Beyah
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Posted on Monday, June 27, 2011
Presentation on Middle Eastern Cultural Events
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Posted on Monday, March 16, 2009
Can a Woman be an Imam?
Debating Form and Function in Muslim Women’s Leadership*
Ingrid Mattson
ISNA Vice President
One day We shall call all people according to their Imams. Whoever is given his book in his right hand will read it and will not be subject to the slightest injustice. But whoever was blind in this world will be blind in the next and completely astray from the path. (Qur’an 17:71)
Political leadership, in the sense of state power, is not the concern of this study; rather, we will attempt to formulate a framework for discussing religious leadership in the American Muslim community, as it affects women in particular. This distinction between political and religious leadership is not unnatural to Islamic societies, despite the common wisdom that there is no separation between “church and state” in Islam. In fact, throughout most of Islamic history, there was an identifiable class of religious scholars who placed significance on maintaining (at least the appearance of) independence from political authorities. i These religious scholars, the ‘ulama, were joined in guiding the Muslim community by spiritual leaders (“shaykhs”—Sufi or otherwise), in addition to a variety of religious professionals: imams, khatibs (preachers), Qur’an reciters, mu’adhdhins (prayer callers), spiritual healers and others.
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Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2005
Hospital Chaplaincy and the Knowledge of Hearts - What on earth is a chaplain? And what is a Muslim chaplain?
Rabia Harris
This is a question that presents itself forcefully through Clinical Pastoral Education, and perhaps more forcefully in hospital chaplaincy than in some other contexts. In the hospital, there is a clear difference between being a chaplain and being an imam (though the functions may overlap), and between being a chaplain and being an `alim (though the functions may overlap). Hospital patients only occasionally need ritual observances or practical advice from us when we come into attendance; they almost never need learned opinion—or else they need opinion that is outside our competence. Finding out what they do need from us was a great experience for me, and helped my own religious development in surprising ways.
I came to Islam from a very secular intercultural Christian-Jewish family, so like most born Muslims, I didn’t grow up with any exposure to chaplains. I entered the Hartford Seminary Islamic Chaplaincy program not in order to “become a chaplain,” but because I was excited by the idea of a new complementary approach to formal Muslim religious education, one that might open new horizons for women. Little did I know what I was actually going to get myself into when I started my unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE.
Interestingly enough, my training director, or supervisor, wasn’t about to tell me what I was getting myself into, either. Right from the first interview, I knew I was entering unknown and peculiar territory. John wanted me to decide what I was going to learn! That was a real puzzlement. I didn’t have the faintest idea what CPE had to teach, so deciding what I was going to be taught, via a “learning contract,” seemed absurd. But since no one was going to lay the course out for me, I took a swing at laying it out myself, as required.
I decided that my goal was to find out what the whole business was about. Define a chaplain. Define a Muslim chaplain. See if I can become one.
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Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005
VISIONARY LEADERSHIP
Vision, Communication, Empowerment, and Discipline
Louay Safi
Leadership is, arguably, the most important and complex act in human life. Leadership is often perceived as a position of power and authority endowed on particular individuals by organizations and governments.
While power and authority are obvious manifestations of the act of leadership, leadership involves much more than the exercise of power and authority. To lead is essentially to move ahead of others; to guide and to show the way; and to be willing to withstand friction, resistance, and uncertainty, often experienced by those who move ahead of others and advance into higher grounds and uncharted territories.
Leadership is, evidently, one of the most elusive concepts and is exceedingly difficult to pin down, as it continues to manifest itself in individuals who possess different qualities and styles. This has given rise to the contingency theory of leadership. According to this theory, leadership hinges more on the circumstances surrounding the act of leaders, rather than any specific set of traits or skills, or particular leadership styles. Simply put, contingency theory argues that it is the circumstance in which people find themselves is make particular traits or styles more effective than others. Hence, what might be considered useful traits or styles under certain circumstance may turn out to be unhelpful under another.
Contingency theory of leadership underscore an important fact, which we will highlight further below: traits and styles do not by themselves give rise to leadership unless they are bought to bear on the challenges and difficulties facing a particular group of people. Traits, qualities, and styles are, nonetheless, important aspects of understanding leadership, and have, therefore, always constitute, since time immemorial, the key to examining the act of leadership.
Abu Ja’far al Mansur, the founder of the ‘Abbasid state, posed, for one, the leadership question to some of his confidants:
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Posted on Sunday, August 07, 2005
American Muslims Have a 'Special Obligation'
An American Muslim leader asks: Who has the greatest duty to stop violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam? Muslims
By Ingrid Mattson
Vice President, Islamic Society of North America
The terrorist attack on Sept. 11th exacerbated a double-bind American Muslims have been feeling for some time. So often, it seems, we have to apologize for reprehensible actions committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. We tell other Americans, “People who do these things (oppression of women, persecution of religious minorities, terrorism) have distorted the 'true' Islam.”
And so often we have to tell other Muslims throughout the world that America is not as bad as it appears. We say, “These policies (support for oppressive governments, enforcement of sanctions responsible for the deaths almost 1 million Iraqi children, vetoing any criticism of Israel at the United Nations) contradict the 'true' values of America.”
But frankly, American Muslims have generally been more critical of injustices committed by the American government than of injustices committed by Muslims. This has to change.
For the last few years, I have been speaking publicly in Muslim forums against the injustice of the Taliban. This criticism of a self-styled Muslim regime has not always been well-received. Some Muslims have felt that public criticism of the Taliban harms Muslim solidarity. Others have questioned my motives, suggesting that I am more interested in serving a feminist agenda than an Islamic one. My answer to the apologists has always been--who has the greatest duty to stop the oppression of Muslims committed by other Muslims in the name of Islam? The answer, obviously, is Muslims.
I have not previously spoken about suicide attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. I did not avoid the subject--it simply did not cross my mind as a priority among the many issues I felt needed to be addressed. This was a gross oversight. I should have asked myself, Who has the greatest duty to stop violence committed by Muslims against innocent non-Muslims in the name of Islam? The answer, obviously, is Muslims.
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Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005
LAW, RELIGION AND THE PROPHETIC METHOD OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Jawdat Said
Translated by Afra Jalabi
This article was reprinted by permission of the Journal of Law and Religion
I. Introduction
We live in a world in which four fifths of its population live in frustration while the other fifth lives in fear. The United Nations, our world’s “figleaf,” does not hide the shame of humanity but rather scandalizes humanity’s malaise. It is troubling that the League of Nations and the United Nations were born after two world wars. Humanity’s unity should come as a natural birth and not as the result of a caesarian section, i.e., through violent global wars. This is reminiscent of the ages of epidemics. Then, because of ignorance about the causes behind these illnesses, plagues swept through communities, leaving millions of dead behind. Yet, after technology made it possible for us to see smaller forms of life and medicine brought us a better understanding of germs, communities became better equipped to halt disease and heal the sufferers. If a country now is devastated by an epidemic, we blame it on the lack of sufficient hygiene. So too, the wars that erupt here and there are caused by ignorance of the intellectual organisms that infect communities with hate and influence people to commit atrocities. In today’s world, relying on science, we concern ourselves with preventing germ warfare while sheltering the intellectual viruses that destroy us: our intellectual foods are still polluted. We cannot afford to continue to be confused or ignorant about these invasive germs.
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Posted on Saturday, July 30, 2005
PRINCIPLES OF ISLAMIC INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT
Amr Abdullah
The purpose of this paper is to discuss potential principles for interpersonal dispute resolution models within an Islamic context. Such a task requires an Islamic researcher to walk a fine line in order to avoid falling in one of two methodological traps. The first trap is to draw upon western literature on conflict analysis and resolution without sufficient consideration of whether and how that literature may be applied in an Islamic setting. The subtle assumptions underlying most of the conflict intervention models developed in the west have gone undetected, until recently. 1 The other trap is to embark upon a review of the existing Islamic literature relevant to conflict. This approach leads directly to entrapment in circles of legalistic interpretations developed centuries ago, which lack the spirit of conflict resolution as a movement for social change and an interdisciplinary field of research.
However, to accomplish the task of framing appropriate principles, there is no escape from combining the two approaches, while developing the tools necessary to avoid the shortcomings of each. In this regard, this work takes an approach that is appropriately cognizant of the advances made in the west in the field of conflict analysis and resolution. These advances need not be dismissed merely because of concern about cultural appropriateness of western models for Islamic settings. Instead, western literature should be reviewed carefully in order to extract principles, models and techniques which could properly inform an Islamic model; and exclude or set limitations those which are bound by specific western cultural conditions.
This article, while informed by various western-based models of conflict intervention and resolution, 2 is mainly grounded into two Islamic foundations. First, this article argues that historical misuses, abuses and misinterpretations of Islamic sources have diluted the strong emphasis on justice, equality and freedom in Islam as a value system. These centuries-long practices have been so enmeshed with the original messages of Islam that unjust, abusive institutions and structures now appear to be part of the Islamic heritage. Therefore, for an Islamic conflict intervention model to be of benefit to Muslim communities and individuals, its major principle should be to restore to Islam its principles and values of justice, equality and freedom.
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Posted on Saturday, July 30, 2005