Tag Archives: Islam

One year on, Muslim women reflect on wearing the niqab in a mask-wearing world Muslim women say they are having an easier time wearing the niqab during pandemic times. hjrivas/Pixabay, CC BY Anna Piela, Northwestern University One year into the pandemic, protective face masks have come to signify different things for different groups of people. To some it’s an issue …

Halima Aden, the first Muslim model to wear a hijab and burkini on the cover of the swimsuit edition of the Sports Illustrated. Yu Tsai Kayla Renée Wheeler, Grand Valley State University Media reports have celebrated Halima Aden becoming the first woman to be featured in the Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit edition wearing a hijab or a burkini. In the …

Fear of Islam pervades every corner of modern Muslim life. Fotos583/www.shutterstock.com Peter Hopkins, Newcastle University; Gurchathen Sanghera, University of St Andrews, and Katherine Botterill, Edinburgh Napier University Immigration and national identity currently are at the forefront of the public conscience. In France, the burkini ban and in the UK proposals for migration controls following the Brexit vote are dividing communities. …

Asking ‘everyday’ people. MBI/Shutterstock Julian Hargreaves, University of Cambridge Accusations of antisemitism have been swirling around the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader in 2015. He has been accused of harbouring antisemitic views and offering public support to party colleagues labelled as antisemitic. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party have faced accusations of “endemic” Islamophobia. In the run-up to the …

An homage to Samuel Paty, a teacher murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Oct. 18, 2020. Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University A French high school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class was beheaded on Oct. 16 by an 18-year-old …

Alexandre Pelletier, Cornell University After Indonesia’s democratic transition of 1998, dozens of small yet vocal Islamist groups sprung up throughout the world’s most populous Muslim majority country. The Islamic Defenders’ Front (Front Pembela Islam or FPI) – the most notorious of these groups – has mobilised, often violently, to curb what it considers as immorality and misguided religious minorities. The …

Muslim schools can provide a place for girls to study while wearing headscarves. Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images Carol Ferrara, Emerson College Following recent terror attacks in France, President Emmanuel Macron appears intent on pushing forward with his plans to combat what he sees as “Islamic separatism” – starting with the schools. A new bill announced on Nov. 18 will …

The podcast Caliphate explored the war on terror and ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq. In this March 12, 2020 photo, a man rides a motorcycle in northwestern Syria the current focus of the 10-year civil war. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) Peter Klein, University of British Columbia The latest scandal to hit United States news media involves Rukmini Callimachi, …

Chris Wilson and Sanjal Shastri What is the relationship between hate crimes and terrorism? Could we have predicted the terror attacks at Masjid Al Noor and the Linwood Islamic Centre on March 15 last year if we had been able to identify a rising number of verbal and physical attacks against Muslims in the preceding months and years? In New …

Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Utrecht University and Ammar Maleki, Tilburg University Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s mass mobilisation of Islam showed that modernisation by no means implies a linear process of religious decline. Reliable large-scale data on Iranians’ post-revolutionary religious beliefs, however, has always …