We live in a consumer driven world.  That means commercials for holidays, causing them to loose thier true meaning.  Do we as a Muslims really want an Islamicized Christmas?  Well we are on our way.  Well intentioned, loving parents go all out.  As parents it is our duty to protect our children from every source of harm.  
 

 Good Character is the means to every good end. Whatever your goals are in life, good character is one of the indispensible provisions on your journey.  The next installment of the Suhba Papers follows up on the necessary components of making our communities spiritually uplifting despite our differences.  In addition to looking at how the company one keeps affects their spiritual health, we also need to look at the company we are.
 

 Commercialism, for most Islamic schools is an issue confined to advertisements seen on television or in a magazine. It can be hidden, and implores us as educators to understand how and why commercialism exists in schools, why and how commercialism is contradictory to Islamic morals and values, and understand how we can avoid our students becoming victims in the onslaught of big business. Critique leads to change; where and if it moves us depends on our listening and our “grounding.” If we are to truly understand the society in which we live, we need to develop a critical perspective within our discussions of education.
 

 Why was it that the local Imams would tell me that I could keep playing my guitar, while some of the voices in the mosque or on the internet were saying that to do so would be a sin?
 Why were there different groups proselytizing for their various organizations, each criticizing or downplaying the importance of the other?  I had found the truth crystal clear in the Qur’an, but had found a community as divided as it was beautiful.
 Upon realizing that unity was central to Islam, and that people had different conceptions of what a proper community should look like, I realized that two things were needed in my life: a spiritual comfort zone, and a philosophy of or approach to community that balanced the need for authentic practice with the reality of variation in definitions of and adherence to authentic practice.

 Who do you want your child to be like when he is older?  Whoever that person is, when he does something wrong, you have to correct them in a way that will guide his Being towards the person you want them to be.  Discipline is not punishment and should not be punitive in any way; you are teaching your child the proper way to “Be” in the world.  So we must always ask ourselves, “What characteristics do my words and actions engender in my child?”  We need to change our vocabulary if we want to change how we do things, so from this point forth, I will not be using the word discipline.  It connotes punishment, and in this article I hope to elaborate why that is not the Muslim way of doing things.
 

 Even small acts of mistreatment of children register in their open, still-developing brain. While psychologists tell us that children are adaptable and that parenting need only be “good-enough,” it is easy as parents to be unaware of the larger patterns in our child-rearing practices. A pattern of mistreatment of a child can lead to an adult who believes it is acceptable to harm children “for their own good.” It can lead to an adult who justifies abusing a spouse, or accepting abuse, with Qur’an. 
 

 As Muslim parents, it is our responsibility to Allah SWT to protect our children from harm and teach them His commandments.  Gift giving is a sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad SAW, but when it teaches consumerism, endangers the health of our children and aids multinational corporations to exploit the poor and add to the environmental burden, we need to re examine how modern gift giving fits in the Islamic world view.
 

 In the first installment of this series entitled the Suhba papers, I mentioned that what motivates me to write is recognition of the need for unity within the American Muslim community and witnessing the tragedy of community disintegration in recent years.
 In this second installment of the Suhba Papers, we will begin with a discussion of balancing the religious and social need for community unity and the importance of keeping (and being) spiritually uplifting company in light of differing perspectives and degrees of adherence.
 

 Gender Issues among Muslims have long been central to the construction of Muslim as “Other.” Muslim response to the stereotyping has tended toward denial or minimization.
There seemed to be an attitude that for Muslims to discuss obvious and flagrant cases of oppression of women in Muslim countries was somehow a betrayal of the religion into the hands of its enemies. Now a new website, Altmuslimah.com, is taking on issues of gender relations among Muslims with articles that are both thoughtful and forcefully argued. Issues covered include empowerment, religion and authority, domestic violence, interpretation, hijab, talibanization, and more. This is an important initiative for Muslims in America and beyond, and it deserves our support, even when we don’t agree with a viewpoint expressed.
 

 A new survey provides a view of the Muslims in America. “Muslim Americans – A National Potrait: An in-depth analysis of America’s most diverse religious community” was undertaken by Gallup, drawing on data from three separate Gallup surveys. The report finds American Muslims to be demographically the youngest and most racially diverse religious community in the United States. The survey’s results differ significantly from the Pew Research Center’s Muslim Americans: Middle Class and mostly Mainstream, released in 2007. Both surveys are welcome contributions to the dominant culture’s process of understanding the meaning of the presence of Muslims in America, as well as to the process by which the Muslims in America come to understand themselves as a collective and their position within the dominant culture.
 

 The recent murder of Aasiya Zubair Hassan shocked, and saddened, and angered American Muslims.  The incident has served to highlight the issue of domestic violence among American Muslims.  There was a call for Imams across the nation to speak out in their Friday sermons on February 20, 2009. Many did so...
 

 Over the last few years, we have seen a growing and welcome trend of American Muslim involvement in the civic affairs of the United States.  The internet is being used increasingly by American Muslims, and has allowed new ways of organizing and taking action, some of which are arguably superior to methods at our disposal in earlier years. As increasing numbers of Muslims become involved with this trend, it is worthwhile to consider some of the other effects of internet use: disorientation, increased anxiety, impatience, loss of focus, and difficulty being alone.
 

 There is, perhaps, a tension between one's striving to feed, uplift, and save one's soul and the recognition of one's own imperfection and humanity. This tension is manifested at the community level in the individual's need for a like-minded community in which one can feel at home, authentic and true in one's practice, and spiritually uplifted in both states and practice. If this tension is not resolved, the results are often tragic.
 

 Not long after his inauguration, President Barak Obama signed an executive order specifying that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year.  No sooner had Obama taken these positive steps than Republican members of congress and certain segments of the “Mainstream Media” (often abbreviated M$M) began their attempt to incite public opinion against Obama’s decision using the weapon the Right has so successfully wielded over the last eight years – fear.
 

 Muslims in America have long been concerned about the portrayal of Islam in mainstream media.  We have been effective in addressing some of the stereotypes about Muslims and Islam in the educational arena.
  Over the last few years, there has been an increasing presence of Muslim voices appearing in the media, and more recognition of the importance of American Muslims getting involved in journalism.  But events like the ongoing tragedy in Gaza bring home how far from being heard in the United States Muslim voices are when it comes to issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

 The election of Barack Obama presents an opportunity for American Muslims to address issues of race in the community that have typically been minimized by many of the Muslims in the United States. Dr. Sherman Jackson identified some of the issues and their centrality to the establishment of Islam in America in this interview. The interview took place in the Summer of 2006, but is now more relevant than ever.
 

 Back in April 2008, Tariq Nelson, winner of the 5th Annual Brass Crescent Award for Best Blog, called our attention to new conversation beginning in the American Muslim community.  He noted, “We are slowly moving away from the old thinking of isolation and beginning to take the opportunity to engage the community and respond to the massive challenges facing our communities.”
 

 Divisions in the Muslim community in the United States by race and class present serious challenges to our efforts to establish the Deen of Islam on these shores.
 

 Financial Crisis. An epidemic of kidnapping in Afghanistan. A Muslimah scientist driven insane by inhuman treatment at the hands of American interrogators. Cheney admits approving waterboarding, while a bipartisan senate report links Bush to detainee suicides. Plenty of scope in all this for Muslim engagement. It takes hard work to balance engagement in the world while maintaining a sound heart.
 

 In the national discussion that was the 2008 Presidential Election campaign, Muslims and Islam were significant themes. As one might expect in a media-saturated society, what mattered was not Muslims and Islam themselves, but rather the ways in which “Muslims” and “Islam” could be portrayed, the extent to which these terms might be forged into simplistic tropes that could be wielded to conjure fear of the Other.
 

 Criticism of the Obama campaign’s tepid defense of American Muslims,” and some of the response to the distribution of the film “Obsession,” provide evidence that social capital is accumulating for Muslims.
 

 Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah spoke at Dartmouth College and cited the production of a culture that is both authentically Muslim and authentically American as an important means by which Muslims in the United States can realize their potential. On reflection, it may be seen that the production of culture serves to increase the number and the richness of ties between Muslims and non-Muslims and is therefore a form of social capital. It is by increased social capital that hate-speech like the film “Obsession” becomes unacceptable as part of the larger community’s discourse concerning Muslims and Islam.
 

 While attempts have been made by many Muslims and non-Muslims to understand the  events of the terrorist attacks of September 11in their political context, others have attempted to link these events with the religion of Islam itself, and have called for a “reformation” of the religion.
  Irshad Manji published a book titled The Trouble with Islam, in 2003 and republished it 2004 with an opportunistically reworded title The Trouble with Islam Today
 Here is presented a critical review of her book and summary of how other critics view her work.
 

 A few years ago, FrontPageMag.com columnist Paul Marek wrote an article titled “Why the Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.”  His thesis was that even if the majority of Muslims abhor violence, it doesn’t matter because “the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history....  The hard quantifiable fact is, that the ‘peaceful majority’ is the ‘silent majority’ and it is cowed and extraneous.”  For Marek, the upshot is this: “We must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.”
 He’s wrong.  No, he’s worse than wrong, because his position could be used to justify mass murder.
 

 In February 2008, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture in London about whether the British legal system should allow non-Christian courts to decide certain matters of family law. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.
 

  Constitutional scholar, Claes G. Ryn, argues in his paper that some self-serving people in the American power elite, while claiming to want and protect us from domestic moral nihilism and cultural fragmentation and from the evils from abroad, are progressively subverting our constitution in the name of the constitution. They do this by means of a deception whereby they would have us believe that their centralized power-grabbing ideology actually “comports well with the thinking of the framers of the U.S. Constitution”.
 Mr. Ryn goes on to outline how this - neo-Jacobinism, he calls it - is an anti-constitutional ideology, eroding the old American pragmatic ideas of limited, decentralized government as well as that of the unwritten constitution which was the historical habits and beliefs of the American people.
 

 Muslim Student organizations across the United States, of which there are roughly 200, are continuing their struggles to form their own identities, including who they accept into their folds.  Some would advocate for only accepting more obedient Muslims into the groups, while others would argue to include all students who self-identify as being Muslim.  The following article briefly reviews this issue...
 
 

 As if recent headlines concerning global warming, war in the Middle East, and the instabilities of the world-wide capitalist system are not enough to occupy the fatalist in all of us, the decline of the bee population is proving profoundly unsettling; forcing scientists and religious-minded people alike to take a closer look at where we ourselves are headed as a species.
 

 Noted Swiss Muslim scholar addresses issues of Muslim-Christian dialogue, universalism and Muslim identity in the West -- calling for struggling for justice as an act of love, consistency in moral principals, and the eradication of "religious illiteracy" in order to promote what he calls elsewhere an "inclusive memory"of the shared history and values of Muslims and the West.
 

 Biological and social differences among humans are a Divine decree, permitting us not only to know one another, but to know our own selves, says noted Northwestern University Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne.
 

 A summary of the course of Islam's development in America, from the first explorers to slavery to proto-Islamic movements to the foundation of nation-wide orthodox Sunni organizations. This article remains a work in progress.
 

 In 1312 Mansa Abu Bakr of Mali is believed to have traveled from the Senegambian region of the African coast to the Gulf of Mexico.
 

 It is believed that Mansa Abu Bakr of Mali traveled to the Gulf of Mexico in 1312.
Ethno-linguistic analysis shows connections between certain peoples of the West African coast and the native Americans living in the Gulf of Mexico region of the Americas. The evidence is controversial and fragmentary, and not accepted by all scholars.
 

 Former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic describes submission to the will of God as "the strength of the soul to face the times."
 

 Seeing modernity essentially as an acceleration of time allows Muslims to overcome alienation from the modern age.
 

 Prominent American Muslim scholar Dr. Umar Abd-Allah highlights the relevance of accepted cultural diversity throughout Islamic history for the construction of a distinctive American Muslim identity.
 

 A report from a recent Nawawi Foundation conference that took on the question, "What is the Islamic Tradition?" In attendance were Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.
 

 The old Capitalist maxim, "More is Better," has failed us, writes American environmentalist Bill McKibben. With unbridled individualism increasingly eroding civil society, higher standards of living have not made us happier.
 

 A recent survey released by the Pew Research Center, entitled "American Muslims: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," finds that US Muslims have mostly conciliatory attitudes towards American society, and are generally more likely to support the separation of religion from politics than their Christian counterparts.
 

 American academic and convert to Islam David Coolidge emphasizes the essentials of the Islamic message sometimes obscured in an increasingly sophisticated discourse concerning Islam in the West.
 

 Celebrated Muslim thinker Charles Le Gai Eaton examines justice as an ethical principle in Islam as fundamental to the Faith as the "Five Pillars."
 

 Gary North, a prominent Christian libertarian writer, explains the real reasons behind the Christian Right's support for Israel: so Christians can enjoy the Rapture and allow God's Judgment to descend on the Jews.
 

 In the wake of a conference of Holocaust deniers sponsored by the Iranian government, Muslim leaders condemn the blatant disregard for historical truth.
 

 Professor Azizah Hibri discusses how Islam has been portrayed and received by both elites and the masses in the early years of the American nation.
 

 African-American convert to Islam Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) overcomes religious and racial obstacles, embodying the hope for the inclusion of American Muslims in U.S. politics.
 

 An overview of the recent letter dismantling some of the Pope's recent misrepresentations of Islam.
 

 In a recent interview with Islamica Magazine, Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington says he believes his theory on the rising importance of cultural affiliation has been misinterpreted to mean an inevitable clash between Islam and the West.
 

 The Islamic Society of North America welcomes Ingrid Mattson as its president -- the first female and the first American-born convert to fill the position.
 

 UMMA, the first free standing Muslim Free Clinic in America celebrates 10 years of community service
 

 Al-Andalus as a Model for Our Own TimeYale Univeristy Professor Maria Menocal offers Andalusian Spain as a model of cultural diversity and appreciation that permanently enriched the lives of Muslims, Christians and Jews.
 

 A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle questions the normative racial associations most Americans have with Islam.
 

 Noted historian Howard Zinn questions the ability of war to solve the problem of terrorism.
 

 A call for Muslims around America to participate in the creation of a magazine speaking to the state of Islam in the United States. 

 Dar al Islam Executive Director Anas Coburn interviews Dr. Sulayman Nyang (Howard University) and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (Zaytuna Institute) about the creation of an anual publication documenting Islam in the United States.
 

 Starting with the term "Islamic fascists," Libertarian analyst writer Charley Reese deconstructs some of the more obvious stereotypes of Islam and Muslims currently endemic among U.S. media and politicians alike.
 

 Latino-American Muslim Aaron Siebert-Llera offers some historical and sociological reflections on the growing phenomenon of Latino conversion to Islam.
 

 Imam Zaid Shakir responds to the tendency of Muslim ideologues to use Islam to justify political needs.
 

 Political activism among various "Islamic" groups is often explained by recourse to Islam's supposed uniqueness as an "organizing belief system." Here, International Studies Professor Quintan Wiktorowicz argues for a "rational actor model" in analyzing the strategies and framing devices of Islamist groups, especially those prone to violence, rather than claiming such movements are organically connected to Islamic beliefs and practices.
 

 History Professor Lawrence Davidson examines the relationship between American neo-colonialism, Protestant evangelism and Zionism.
 

 Prominent Muslim Anthropologist Talal Asad speaks on Islamism, the West, tradition and modernity. Excerpts from an interview with Saba Mahmood.
 

 An "episteme" has been defined by Michel Foucault as an underlying "structure of thought" for a given time and place within which all knowledge is articulated. Some writers have spoken of an "epistemic break" in the Muslim world through the experience of Colonialism. This article attempts to evaluate changing notions of Islamic knowledge through the Colonial period in Muslim Africa.
 

 Dr. Elizabeth Debold speaks to the stark reality of the arrogance of the ego-self, which seeks separation and individual recognition. The ability to name the evil that lurks within the individual self empowers us, she explains, to address the evils of terrorism, violence and oppression; and indeed, the fact that the pursuit of our ego and selfish desires can only end in our own individual destruction as well.
 

 The topic of Islam in America has been attracting increased scholarly and popular interest, with many new works appearing in recent years. This is an attempt to catalogue what has been written so far.
 

 The divergence between Islamic ideals and practical realities within the landscape of American Islam has prodded American Muslim scholars to address the issue of the "ghetto liquor store", underscoring the importance of Islamic scholars in speaking to larger social issues.
 

 More than 1400 years ago, God informed us in the Qur'an -- the revealed scripture of Islam -- that interest-based money (riba or usury) was off limits. In the article below, a respected international finance expert, Belgian International Finance Professor Bernard Lietaer, argues that global interest-based money is the root of destructive problems such as the wealth gap, environmental devastation and sustainability issues. He proposes that we re-introduce, on a larger scale than currently in practice, complementary money systems based on the system of barter in order to foster long-term financial cooperation rather than avaricious competition over money that inevitably remains scarce in an interest-based economy.
 

 Columbian University Professor of Government and Anthropology, Mahmood Mamdani, demonstrates how the label of "good Muslim" or "bad Muslim" changes depending on circumstance, but that the only constant litmus test seems to be pro-American sentiment. Official America, argues Mamdani, itself has played a large role in manufacturing a Muslim (political) identity which could be subservient to foreign policy goals, a historical occurence illustrated by front-line areas of the Cold War, such as Africa.
 

 City University of New York Anthropology Professor Talal Asad examines the history of secularism and its relation with the public sphere in French society. Where some might consider French laicité to be the fulfillment of the secularist dream, Asad demonstrates the secular government's propensity to betray its theoretical justification of neutrality in order to exert its supremacy in the public sphere, a sphere of which the government itself defines the borders.
 

 The current manipulation of Islam by both secular and reactionary ideologues leaves any onlooker genuinely concerned about the future viability of Muslim societies at an impasse. Both extremes present naïve solutions to complex problems, ideologies whose historicization reveals the lack of any tangible link to the Islamic tradition itself. This article argues that justice, stability and peace can only prevail in Islamic communities when they reestablish links to their own traditions, in other words, only when the opinions of thoroughly trained classical scholars are respected.
 

 Noted Islamic scholar and George Washington University professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr comments on the meaning of the Muslim fast (sawm). This excerpt from a larger work of Dr. Nasr is a reminder of Islam's ascetic character and the necessity of spiritual poverty (faqr) before God.
 

 Dr. Abd al-Hakim Jackson, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan, describes the increased tension surrounding Islam within the Blackamerican community. A new "Black Orientalism" has obscured the historical interaction of Islam with "Black" peoples, transposing the experience of racial subjugation in America on the dynamics of racial interaction in Muslim societies. But immigrant Muslims in America have also been insensitive to the history of Blackamerican interaction with and appropriation of Islam, largely as an ideology of protest, contributing to the Islam's increased marginalization among Blackamericans.
 

 Anas Coburn, a marriage and family therapist and long-time Dar al Islam executive, responds to the crisis of community that has become endemic to Western modernity. As Muslims living in the West struggle to maintain their traditional values, Coburn asks a more basic question than whether Muslim communities can safeguard their traditions. Amidst a "nation of strangers," where "the dominant society's organization places impediments on the development of vital communities," the real question is: can Muslim communities themselves be safeguarded? The solution, the author believes, lies in the strengthening of personal relationships, or the accumulation of "social capital," between Muslims.
 

 What's really happening with American mothers of all stripes - from full-time homemakers to full-fledged workaholics, all income levels, all racial backgrounds - is worry about popular culture, and what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents' ability to impart positive values to their children, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 mothers.
 

 Cedric Muhammad, prominent intellectual, writer and business leader (the former general manager of Wu-Tang), deplores the prevalence of a dogmatic patriotism that has evolved into a sort of a religion, where it has become blasphemous to investigate injustices perpetrated at the hands of the American government.
 

 When those working to establish Islam in North America meet, among the most frequently mentioned priorities for the Muslim Community is the development of means by which the Islamic Identity of Youth can be preserved as they grow to maturity.
 

 Philosophy professor Michael Neuman questions the rhetoric of Islam's supposed failure in relation to Christendom (Bernard Lewis). In terms of providing for its citizens, violence or competent leaders, the Christian West does not appear so enviable. It was not Christianity or democracy that gave rise to the admitted economic and technological superiority of Western Europe, and thus America, but the "formation of cohesive, undemocratic nation states."
 

 American convert to Islam, Siraji Umm Zaid, wonders at the reluctance of conservative Muslim leadership to speak against honor killings, female genital mutilation or the denial of education to women. The basis for condemning such behavior is within Islam itself, but when Muslims are silent, the rights of Muslim women become championed by those who might bear animosity towards Muslims
 

 Derek Cohen, a white Jewish leftist recounts his brush with a radical resistance movement while growing up in South Africa under apartheid. The author has some important insights into the atmosphere that breeds terrorism and how the lines between innocent civilians and collateral damage can sometimes be blurred in the minds of radical revolutionaries.
 

 Professor Mazrui reexamines the stereotype that Islam is irreconcilable with both secular modernity and civil society. By distinguishing between "theological Islam" (that of law and ritual) and "historical Islam" (Muslim experience), Mazrui says Islamic societies had realized many "modern" precepts, especially in terms of religious tolerance. Islam needs to discover its own tradition of "creative synthesis" that defined the apex of Muslim civilization, where there was "learning from others, letting others learn from Islam."
 

 Imam Omar's recent article, "Overcoming Religiously Motivated Violence," examines the relationship between religion and contemporary conflicts around the world. A more nuanced understanding of religion and violence is needed, where religion may be "implicated in violence," but is the not the primary cause. On the other hand, none of the major religious traditions can be said to have been explicitly pacifist. The author provides some guidelines for interfaith dialogue aimed at preventing religious violence. Imam Omar resides in South Africa and is a program director for the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
 

 The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.
 

 A critique of the methodology of the academic field of "Islamic studies" which necessarily objectifies Islamic history and civilization through common symbols allegedly applicable to all religions. Instead of this "Occidentalized Islam," writer Tazim Kassem advocates looking at Islam from within its own "worldview," where symbols and tradition are permitted a greater degree of dynamism.
 

 Prominent Muslim scholar Dr. G.F. Haddad responds to the concern that explanations of marital rights and responsibilities most often give rights to men and duties to women.
 

 Terri Ginsberg, a Jewish Studies professor at Dartmouth College, responds to the attempts of various pro-Israeli groups to limit criticism of Israel on U.S. college campuses in the name of academic "freedom."
 

 This short list of resources will be updated from time to time. It is intended to provide alternative insights to the increasingly monolithic voice with which major media in this country speak.
 

 Kenny Gamble, a Muslim activist, is working to revive community in Philadelphia.
 

 A brief essay identifying anti-Arab Bush Administration officials and calls from the rightwing press for a radical change in US policy.
 

 While dated, this article from a back issue Z magazine provides a means of seeing the current conflict in a different light. It is followed by a thoughtful commentary by an American Muslim.
 

 Edward Said, writing in Al Ahram Online, draws lessons for the future from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

 Edward Said, writing in Counterpunch, challenges the appropriation of moral language by the Bush administration.
 

 This essay examines some of the effects of interactions with computers on the mind, taken from Adbusters
 

 Prepared by the Zarnuji Institute, with additional annotations by Dar al Islam.
 

 Documents from the package readings prepared by the Zarnuji Institute for their Toronto Conference: Beyond Schooling.
 

 Edward Said makes a personal commentary on Zionist tactics used against him, setting them in the context of the current struggle
 

 A new book examines the commodification of the concept of care, and the harm it causes communities. Review from Adbusters
 

 According to the Washington Post, the Taliban announced the beginning of a campaign to destroy all statutes in Afghanistan, including the historical statues of Bamiyan, in the name of Islam.
 

 Commentary from a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster on the Intifadah al-Quds.
 

 As we deploy new technologies at an accelerating pace, social consequences arise we neither understand nor know how to effectively manage. This article reviews some of these consequences and draws implications for Muslim use of the Internet.
 

 The development of Brazil's shanty-towns into permanent neighborhoods illustrates the way Allah's Mercy comes down on those willing to change their conditions.
 

 Noted American Muslim intellectual and activist Dr. Ingrid Mattson characterizes the Muslim's embodiment of the Prophetic behavioral ideal (Sunnah) as the realization of a sacred art form.
 

 From "The Ecologist" Glamorous excess is a staple of the mainstream media, even in its economic reporting. Stories about soaring corporate profits, exorbitant CEO salaries, improbably high stock prices, and the billions made by obscure dot com start-ups so dominate the news that one could easily believe the global economy is making everyone (else) rich. But high-flying winners are the exception in today's economic casino, and no one is losing out more than small farmers.
 

 An article covering some of the basics of business-like attire from the perspective of a Muslimah, followed by comments on the article. The piece is interesting as one more example of the way young Muslims are struggling to articulate an identity that is both Muslim and American.
 

 This essay by Nazim Baksh articulates the sense in which the word "tradition" may be used in describing the mainstream practice of the Muslims throughout history. Rather than being a label, it is a broad area of practice of al-din that provides a time-tested means of determining which applications of our tradition may be said to be "authentic."
 

 This article gives extended background on Imam Jamil Al- Amin . We certainly don't subscribe to the ideology of this newspaper (Maoist) but it does provide useful background information.
 

 This article, excerpted from Jeremy Rifkin's upcoming book by the same title, appeared in The Industry Standard, March 20,2000.
 Think of waking up one day only to find that every aspect of your existence has become a purchased affair, that life Itself has become the ultimate shopping experience.
 

 Sexual difference not only creates a predisposition to be interested in certain kinds of issues, but fundamentally affects every way in which we handle concepts.
 

 The main issue in "What Is the Ko-ran?," by Toby Lester (January Atlantic), is not how one looks at the Koran as a so-called historical text and analyzes it according to the principles of textual or biblical criticism but, rather, how one conceives the very notion of revelation.
 

 Appearing together in public for the first time in 25 years, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and his onetime bitter enemy, Muslim American Society leader Wallace Deen Mohammed, today celebrated a symbolic reunification of their rival black Muslim factions.
 

 Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal article: "...The growth of Islam in U.S. prisons is creating anxiety among some Christian ministers. While the vast majority of inmates in the federal prison system are still Christian, the number of Muslim inmates has nearly tripled over the last six years to 6,500. During that time, the ranks of federal prisoners grew 50% to 112,000. And in some states, such as Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, Muslims make up about 20% of the incarcerated population, according to the American Correctional Association...
 

 PARANOIA ABOUT ARABS AND MUSLIMS is not a recurrent theme in American society. But these issues usually only get serious attention when something terrible happens, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or a terror plot discovered by FBI agents last December, when they intercepted alleged bombers on their way into the country from Canada.
 

 Lorenzo Islam looks over the third-floor tower area where he plans to sound the call for Muslim prayer. Islam is turning this house at 633 S. Ohio Ave. into a homeless shelter for women and children of all religions. Some people viewed a boarded-up building in the 600 block of S. Ohio Avenue as an eyesore.
 

 "Most parents send their kids here for reasons other than Islam," lamented the principal of a large Muslim school.
 "A lot of our students have older brothers and sisters who have gone out of control. They smoke, use drugs, sleep around and disobey their parents."
 I knew from my own experience that what he was saying was true. In my first year of teaching I had met the families of many of my students in the Muslim school.
 

 Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and Interactive Journal, is launching a new global equity-benchmark index aimed at investors who follow Islamic investment guidelines.
 The new index -- called the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index, or DJIM -- currently tracks 600 companies whose products and services don't violate Shari'ah law. Companies in the index aren't just from Islamic countries, but from 30 countries around the world, including the U.S.
 

 By arguing that The Quran is a historical document, it is trying to prove that Quran is not the word of God and therefore Islam is nothing but a historical construction that served the political interests of certain vested interests, like Pagan Arabs etc.
 

 Can the clarity of vision brought by novelty outweigh the absence of a Muslim upbringing?  Is adoption a more culturally fertile condition than simple sonship?
 

 This is a New York Times piece by Susan Sachs posted on AMILAnet which covers the growth of Muslim Schools in the US and some of the reasons these schools are seen as attractive to Muslim parents.
 

 According to "The Almanac Book of Facts", the population increased 137% within the past decade, Christianity increased 46%, while Islam increased 235%.
 In a recent pole in the (US), 100,000 people per year in America alone, are converting to Islam. For every 1 male convert to Islam, 4 females convert to Islam, Why?
 

 A good book from the "Muslim Social Service Listserver," a moderated mailing list for Muslims working in social services.
 

 This book is a collection of essays written over several years. Professor Sulayman S. Nyang has collected them to share with the reading public his insights and research findings on the emerging Muslim community in the United States of America.
 

 An edited transcription of a talk given by Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah on July 31, 1999 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.
 

 We shall see that literalism was a school of thought in Islamic jurisprudence, though not considered a very strong one by traditional scholars. But in tenets of faith, and particularly in interpreting the relation of the mutashabihat to the attributes of Allah, literalism has never been accepted as an Islamic school of thought, neither among the Salaf or early Muslims, nor those who came later.
 

 Imam Tahawi's al-'Aqidah, representative of the viewpoint of ahl-al- Sunnah wa-al-Jama'a, has long been the most widely acclaimed, and indeed indispensable, reference work on Muslim beliefs, of which this is an edited English translation.
 

 Difference of opinion between people is natural and inherent due to their characters, ways of thinking and understanding. These affect people's perception and judgment of things.
 

 Noted Islamicist and former Catholic Nun, Karen Armstrong situates recent anti-Islamic remarks by the Vatican within a longer Western tradition of willed ignorance of the Muslim world.
 

 This article concerns a topic of great importance to the development of Islam in America; namely, the de facto social division between the immigrant and African-American communities. In order for our comm unity to transform the social fabric of this country, we must all struggle to become aware of the attitudes and opinions we hold that prevent true brotherhood from flourishing.
 

 Abdal Wadod Shalabi has remarked that a society only becomes truly decadent when "decadence" as a principle is never referred to in public debate. Prior generations of Muslims and Christians were forever fretting about their own unworthiness when measured against past golden ages of goodness and sanctity. But in our self-satisfied era, to invoke the idea of decadence is to invite accusations of a retrograde romanticism: it is itself perceived, perversely enough, as a decadence.
 

 By "divorcing information from the possibilities of action," television media has turned life into a spectator sport, argues Khalid Baig.
 

 An interview with James Howard Kunstler by William Upski Wimsatt, appearing in Adbusters No.29 Spring 2000. (www.adbusters.org). "In The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler observes that the building of suburbia as a replacement for towns and cities was a self-destructive act, 'The living arrangement Americans now think of as normal is bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically, and spiritually. The physical setting itself - the cartoon landscape of car-clogged highways, strip malls, tract houses, franchise fry pits, parking lots, junked cities, and ravaged countryside - is not merely a symptom of our troubled culture but in many ways a primary cause of our troubles."
 

 The prophet Muhammad (may Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon him) said that we become like the people we keep company with. One can argue that, similarly, we may become like those who or that which we spend time with in our living rooms via our TV screens. Unless you turn off the tube, the amount and intensity as well as the often pernicious nature of the agony and violence turned spectacle, whether as news or entertainment, either breaks your heart or incases it in layers of ice in order to cope with the overload.
 

 ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Muslim extremists and Islam's treatment of women. No matter how hard Georgetown University professor Yvonne Y. Haddad tries to humanize American Muslims, her non-Muslim audiences seem fixated on those two issues.
 

 Aside from the issue of meaningless or questionable content, the multiplicity and speed of the current information gusher is threatening to devour or blast its captive audience. More than ever before do humans need to balance this warp of dispersion with the woof of unity, to extract ourselves from the whirlpool of change into the ocean of permanence, to dismount the dragon of time and dwell in the moment of timelessness.
 

 A Book List for Muslims Seeking to Better Understand American Culture.  These are books we've found had an impact on our thinking about the dominant society in which we live.  

 Mass Deportations, Book Burnings and Censorship Konstantin Gamsakhurdia The history of the Chechens is significant not only for that people of 1 million souls, it is also a hallmark of Russian power politics during the czarist, Communist and post-Communist periods. From the perspective of Chechnya's South Caucasus neighbors, the Georgian-born, Swiss-based author of this article analyzes the deep-rooted Chechen drive for independence through the centuries, which, like that of numerous other mountain peoples, has often involved banditry and freebootery. The author, an orientalist and historian, is the eldest son of Sviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first freely elected president.
 

 Noted natural scientist Steve Talbott frames the importance of "meaning" within scientific discourse. True clarity cannot be found by reducing the world to skeleton formulas, but only through remembering the essentially religious perspective of the created world as logos.