Huffington Post Recently a friend commented that even if the Muslim community engaged in a thousand interfaith dialogues, the headline that a Nigerian Muslim extremist group, Boko Haram, has abducted school girls threatening to sell them as slaves is enough to overshadow efforts at building bridges of understanding. Groups like Al Qaeda and Boko Haram claim to...

An abridged version of this article ran in the Huffington Post. Also posted on OnIslam.net “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable...

Florida Times Union, September 19, 2012 Tallahassee Democrat, September 14, 2012 by Parvez Ahmed and Mark Schlakman* Brace yourselves. You may know that protests erupted outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and that mobs subsequently attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi this past Tuesday on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. Apparently this was at least in part...

PUBLISHED IN ALTMUSLIM AND THE AMERICAN MUSLIM How Islamic is “Islamic”? BY PARVEZ AHMED, JUNE 19, 2011 A Malaysian political leader has asked political parties in his country to stop using the word “Islam” in their names so that, “nobody can make use of the religion for their political gains.” This progressive thought is ironically closer to the...