Prof. David Schwam-Baird and I appeared recently on WJCT’s First Coast Connect to discuss Maher-Affleck spat. To listen to the interview, CLICK HERE. Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times provided an an excellent response to Bill Maher in his column The Diversity of Islam. “Let’s not feed Islamophobic bigotry by highlighting only the horrors while...

This was a Featured Blog on Huffington Post. Also appears in the Florida Times Union. Slated to run in the Tallahassee Democrat also. This post has been co-authored with Rabbi Jack Romberg, Temple Israel, Tallahassee, FL. We write this as two friends, a Jew and a Muslim, both with leadership roles in our respective communities. Together we have broken bread,...

Nancy Soderberg and Parvez Ahmed on Melissa Ross’s First Coast Connect. http://www.wjct.org/fcc-july-07-2014/

Florida Times Union By Beth Reese Cravey A Northeast Florida Muslim leader decried as “silly” an extremist group’s recent call for Muslims worldwide to help build an Islamic state in conquered territory in Iraq and Syria. Most Muslims will “not react favorably,” said Parvez Ahmed, board member of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida and an associate...

Delivered on the occasion of the rare convergence of Ramadan, Friday and July 4th by Parvez Ahmed Venue: Islamic Center of Northeast Florida Date: July 4, 2014 (Note – It is customary to recite verses from the Quran in Arabic. In the interest of space and formatting, this write up omits the Arabic verses and only provides their English translations) HOMILY...

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...

Huffington Post Is South Asia becoming a beacon for democracy? On the heels of an inspiring voter turnout in Afghanistan, voters in India are mobilizing in one of the most impressive exercises in universal adult franchise. Just a few months earlier, Pakistan had its first peaceful democratic transition in power. Bangladesh, surprisingly, was an outlier when the...

The military coup against the duly elected government of Egypt was without doubt a blow to democracy. However, the latest poll from Zogby Research shows an almost evenly divided Egyptian public. Fifty-one percent of Egyptians believe it was wrong to depose Mohammed Morsi, their legitimately elected president. While 46 percent believe that the military intervention...

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...

This article first appeared in Today’s Zaman. In 2011, along with millions of people around the world, I was mesmerized by the peaceful popular uprisings in Tahrir Square that eventually led to the end of three decades of dictatorial rule in Egypt. As the youth cheered, I felt solidarity in declaring “we are all Egyptians now.” I cannot say the...

Huffington Post  Tsarnaevs, Mass Murders and Radicalization by Parvez Ahmed Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev resemble Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine gunmen who killed 13 people using guns, explosive devices and bombs rigged to cars. And yet, unlike with the Tasrnaevs, no one dug into which church Harris and Klebold worshiped at. Timothy McVeigh, the...

This article was coauthored by Mark Schlakman  senior program director at the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. Parvez Ahmed  associate professor of finance at the Coggin College of Business, University of North Florida, and frequent commentator on the American Muslim experience. Jack Romberg Rabbi at Temple Israel in...

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...

Huffington Post, July 5, 2012 Also on Patheos, July 5, 2012. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans hold an unfavorable view of Islam and Muslims. That number has remained steady since 9-11. Several factors contribute to this negative perception, certainly none greater than Muslims, albeit a few, committing terrorism in the name of Islam. The media exasperates this negativity, as...

In Huffington Post, April 18, 2012 The Extreme Makeover of India’s (Possible) Next Leader by Parvez Ahmed That Narendra Modi was featured on the cover of Time (March, South Asia edition), around the tenth anniversary of an anti-Muslim massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat, was not surprising. Sparking outrage was the headline (Modi Means Business), which...