Since the first Gaza solidarity encampment launched at Columbia University on April 17, 2024, college students around the county have adopted this form of peaceful protest on their own campuses. UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) encampment [PC: Eric Fang] Students from all faiths and ethnic backgrounds have banded together to lead these efforts in a heartening wave of solidarity. These encampment protests are largely to demand that their universities divest from all economic ties to Israel, with some students also asking for their administrations to make changes in their academic approach ..read more

Muslim Matters Zionist ASU Professor Jonathan Yudelman Harasses Muslim Woman A well-connected academic has been suspended from his university post after he was taped aggressively harassing and abusing a Muslim woman in what appears to be a hate crime related to his support for Israel. Jonathan Yudelman, a Zionist and Jewish professor of Political Theory at Arizona State University, was suspended after he was filmed with a well-known Israeli reservist taunting and throwing personal and religious insults at a Muslim woman. A widely shared online clip from Arizona showed Yudelman, who has held po ..read more

Every time he walks down the dimly lit corridor toward his dorm, Isa crosses the room of the Residential College Advisor—an upperclassman whose role is helping first-year students like him acclimate to life at Princeton. A faded Wawa plastic bag with a handful of condoms dangles from the doorknob. “Please help yourself,” nudges a yellow sticky note pasted on the door. Isa walks past this offer of self-help. Though sex on campus has been normalized—last Valentine’s Day, Princeton had even invited students to a condom art contest and exhibit—Isa, like thousands of Muslim students in colleges acr ..read more

[…contd. from Part I]   Selyane The werehyena snorted, then recoiled, seemingly surprised by her outburst. “As gruesome as my appearance is, I am no jinn.” Jameela’s lip twitched. The beast her father had told her about had spoken! When she was little, her siblings had told her stories of the mustadhaba—the werehyena unbound to the moon, who could transform on command. “So a part of you is still human,” she said softly. He turned up his nose. “An insignificant one.” “But one all the same.” She smiled, feeling relief that the beast was not so beastly after all. “It’s one thing we have in c ..read more

We have all been watching the courage of America’s university students (and those from across the world) as they encamp in peaceful protest of Israel’s genocide against Gaza and demand from their institutions that they divest from their investments in that apartheid state. We have also seen the hypocrisy of their institutions on full display -these supposed beacons of free speech, academic freedom, and intellectual dissent-, as they attempt to crush the peaceful protests…evicting them from student housing, suspending them, canceling their meal plans; and when all of that failed, responding wit ..read more

May 1, 2024   Scenes of a Police State In scenes more reminiscent of a flailing police state than anything else, several major university campuses across the United States of America have witnessed crackdowns against non-violent pro-Palestine protest encampments. In the northeast, New York’s Columbia and City Universities have both seen police crackdowns against both students and faculty protesting links to Israel. On the West Coast, meanwhile, police stood by to watch as hundreds of pro-Israel thugs attacked student protesters at Los Angeles’ University of California. Hundreds of campus ..read more

by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters 28 April 2024 Major Political and Da’wah Figure One of Yemen’s most colourful politicians, and a major figure in Islamic proselytization, passed away this week. Abdul-Majeed Zindani was a founding leader of the Islamist Islah party, a major part of Yemeni political and public life for the last thirty years, and was energetically involved in Yemeni and regional politics and education since the 1960s, when the country first became a republic. In effective exile in Turkiye when he passed away in his early eighties, Abdul-Majeed Aziz Hammoud Zindani was a long way ..read more

The Prophet ﷺ said, “A woman is married for four things: her wealth, her family status, her beauty and her religion. So you should marry the religious woman, otherwise, you will lose out.” [Sahih al-Bukhari 5090]   Once upon a time in the Land of the Sunset, a merchant named Aderfi Yaqoob lived with his six children. Being a man of the market, he had high hopes that not only would his children be merchants like him, but sultans of more than souks. Shortly after his eldest son became old enough to hold a saw, he soon joined Souk Chouari and its carpenters. When his middle son could first h ..read more

by Israa Mohammed Jamal We may have lost faith in governments, but we haven’t lost faith in Allah.   A “Warning” When my son came back from the Taymya mosque, he was puffing and could hardly breathe. “The Israelis said they are going to target near the mosque now,” Mahmoud said. “They ordered us to evacuate the area!” “Where is your father and the others?” I asked. Mahmoud hid his face in his hands and cried. This was during the month of Ramadan, which is the month of saying prayers more than any other time of the year. Ramadan makes us feel closer to Allah , as we put all our efforts int ..read more

The American invasion of Iraq met its toughest battlefield in the campaign twenty years ago this month (April), when insurgents took the city of Fallujah after a bloody battle and held it for seven months until an even bloodier American conquest. Similarly to the Palestinian city Gaza in the period since, Fallujah in that period came to symbolize the tragedy of foreign intervention in the region and the spirit of local resistance. Its rise and fall marked both the climax and a turning point in the Iraq war: before its fall, the Iraqi insurgency had the occupation on the ropes; afterward, Iraq ..read more