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.
 

 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.

 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...
 

 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.
 

 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.
 

 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.
 

 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...
 
 

 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.
 

 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.
 

 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
 

 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.
 

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

 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.
 

 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.
 

 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.
 

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

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

 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 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.
 

 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.