Story Archives of 'Muslims'

Iran has just completed a third round of missile tests. This news comes shortly after it was disclosed that the country has been secretly developing an underground uranium enrichment facility. Only a few months have passed since thousands of Iranians flooded the streets to protest what was believed to be a crooked election.

Iran continues to make news for its nuclear ambitions, bitter denouncements of Israel and America by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the country’s backing of militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. But look closer and you might see a hidden world – middle-class Muslims going about their daily lives, enjoying the fruits of modernity and hoping for stronger economic and cultural ties with the west. They are scientists, entrepreneurs, bankers, and manufacturers.

In his new book Forces of Fortune, longtime Mideast observer Vali Nasr argues that winning the war against extremist Islam means engaging an emerging Muslim middle class. He’s a professor of international relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a senior adviser to the Obama administration.

Read an excerpt from Forces of Fortune

(Photo by Hamed Saber via Flickr/Creative Commons)

The hip hop duo known as the Mujahadeen Team, brothers Suliman and Jason Perez, come out on stage with flaming machetes. Both are devout Muslims.

Jason Perez used to think that he would be locked up or dead at 21. In some ways, it came true. At 21 he converted to Islam, became Hamza Perez, and says he laid his old life to rest. His Puerto Rican Catholic family watched him turn his life around and become a messenger of hope to drug dealers and addicts on the streets.

Hamza did end up in jail, but as an educator, experienced in thug life and wisened by his role as a devoted father and member of Pittsburgh’s Muslim community. New Muslim Cool, by filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, tells his story. Her documentary airs tonight on POV. Film director Jennifer Maytorena Taylor and star Hamza Jason Perez join us from the Argot Network in New York City.

The film airs on WGBH today at 2:30 and 7:30 pm, and on NHPTV beginning July 3.

At a campaign rally in Ft. Meyers, Fl. this week, County Sheriff Mike Scott took the stage to introduce Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and yelled: "On Nov. 4th, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened!"

His intent was clear: to paint Barack Obama as a Muslim, just like Saddam Hussein and all the other bad guys. That people believe it despite proof to the contrary unserscores cynicism at best, or willful ignorance of facts at the worst. Consider the message to the nation’s six million Muslims: being Muslim is a problem.

"How does it feel to be a problem?," W.E.B. DuBois asked in his classic The Souls of Black Folk just over a century ago. Today, a growing population of Arab and Muslim Americans are the latest "problem." Government surveillance and detentions, workplace discrimination, and threats of vigilante violence are a reality for many Arab Americans, whether Muslim or not. A 2006 poll found that 39 percent of Americans admit to holding prejudice against Muslims and believe that they should carry special IDs.

Moustafa Bayoumi is associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, and the co-editor of The Edward Said Reader. He followed seven young Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn to answer the question, which is also the title of his new book: "How does it feel to be a problem?"

Click here to read an excerpt from How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?

(Photo by Kevin Tyson)

Canadian born, Catholic raised, Dr. Ingrid Mattson made history in 2006 when she became the first woman and first convert to head up the continent’s largest Muslim organization. Today she’s speaking at St. Paul’s School in Concord as part of the New Hampshire Humanities Council “Shifting Ground: Religion and Civic Life in America” We’ll speak to Mattson about her journey to Islam, her goals as president of the Islamic Society of North America and the state of the Muslim faith in America today.

Guest

• Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations and Director, Islamic Chaplaincy Program for the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

Being a teenager in America means questioning everything. At least that’s true for many teenagers. But if you are Muslim and female and an immigrant or refugee, life can be less about questioning, and more about learning to navigate. Today in our week-long series Culture Lessons, John Rudolph reports on Muslim girls at Manchester Central High School. Of all the students at the school, they are the ones most obviously searching for a way between American culture and the culture of the country they left behind.