Interview by Melissa Barreto Candice Elam, DNP, FNP-C, accepted Islam 19 years ago. Like many converts, her choice meant practicing a new religion, navigating changing family dynamics, and learning how to maintain her own identity in the wider, and often ethnocentric, Muslim communities. This is her story and the lessons [...]
Nailah Dean There are some widely celebrated holidays in America that Muslims avoid due to their religious connotations, such as Christmas and Easter. Others, such as Thanksgiving or the fourth of July, are more cultural in nature, and thus, some Muslims choose to partake in these festivities. Then, [...]
Dr. Khalil Abdur-Rashid Racism is generally defined as the belief that race is the primary factor that determines human abilities and that such factors produce inherent superiorities of one particular group over another.1 Racism is a part of an ideology Muslims call “Jahiliyah” or compounded ignorance that manifests [...]
C. Islaah Abd’al-Rahim I am a Muslim. I am also a black woman. In the 1970s, I was one of the many black people who converted to Islam and embraced the sunnah (traditional path) of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). During that time black people were looking [...]
WhyIslam.org strongly condemns the murder of our brother, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police. The killing of African Americans by law enforcement is not new or recent, rather it has been an ongoing occurrence for decades. African Americans are not only the victims of police brutality, they [...]
Habeeba Husain Contrary to popular belief, Muslims have been in America from its very beginning. Founding father Thomas Jefferson even had his own copy of the Quran! Many of the Africans forcibly brought to the United States through the Atlantic slave trade came from Muslim backgrounds. From the [...]
Habeeba Husain The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was born in Arabia at a time of intense tribalism and classism. Groups were very much divided and showed loyalty to their own clans and class, even if that meant overlooking great faults in their comrades. With the revelation [...]
Habeeba Husain When Ibtihaj Muhammad and her mother drove around their Maplewood, N.J. hometown years ago, they noticed a group of high schoolers covered head to toe participating in some kind of athletic duel. They never saw anything like that before, but the uniform was intriguing enough for [...]
The Qur'ān was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him at a time when racism was rampant. The Arabs considered themselves to be superior to the non-Arabs. The wealthy considered themselves superior to the poor, and the masters considered themselves superior to their slaves. When one reads [...]
