Reflections on culpability, forgiveness, mercy and legal redress in light of the sexual abuse case pending against Imam Mohammed Abdullah Saleem, founder of the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, IL. Click here and here for more coverage of this case on Patheos. [separator type=”thin”] In March 2015, Imam Mohammad…
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I am a single woman who is not able to drive. A combination of sensory processing and anxiety issues means that I have never felt fully in control of a car and have learned from experience that it’s safer for both myself and others if I’m not on the road….
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Cancer took my grandmother when I was 17-years-old. Actually God did. At the time, I was a high school social butterfly, fully immersed in the world and all its distractions, but within a year of my grandmother’s death, I underwent a metamorphosis. My grandmother’s health began to fail in 2011…
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Some of the first stories I ever loved were ones from the Qur’an and hadith. They filled the colorful pages of picture books my mother kept on a high shelf right next to the shelf where we stored the more stately hardbound, gold-trimmed volumes of the Qur’an. These stories are…
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Turning points have a way of finding you when you least expect them. For most of my adult life, I’d been running away from serving as a spokesperson for or an expert of Muslim women. Women’s issues always felt like the sideshow in the American Muslim conversation, and I wanted…
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“Organizing Inclusive Events.” When I saw this subject line in my inbox, my heart leapt. “It’s about time,” I triumphantly thought to myself as I opened the email. My excitement was short lived because once I scrolled down to the speaker lineup for the conference, I realized not a single…
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From The Women’s Mosque of America:
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The recent Twitter conversation #HijabAndMihrab about women’s complicated relationships with mosques triggered a host of feelings for me. I have a complicated and difficult relationship with my local mosque. While I benefit from praying in a congregation, I can’t deny that as a woman and a convert, I often feel…
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Editorial Note: After an investigation lasting more than two months, the former president of the Institute for Islamic Education in Elgin, Ill, Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, has been charged with criminal sexual abuse for an incident involving a 23-year-old women, which occurred in April 2014. Saleem, 75, is in custody. The…
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The Women’s Mosque of America, founded by M. Hasna Maznavi and Sana Muttalib, held its very first Friday prayer a little over a week ago on January 30. Edina Lekovic, from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, gave the khutbah, or Friday sermon and its theme centered on “spiritual nourishment.” Lekovic…
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