I once found myself trapped on a phone call with an exercised adherent of the Ḥanafī school of Islamic law who made it clear that the conversation was not going to end until I acknowledged that Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767), the school’s founder, was the greatest Hadith scholar in Islamic history. This is not unheard…
LGBTQ and Islam Revisited: The Days of the Donald
PDF Version I recently returned from teaching at the wonderful Ihsan Program in Istanbul (I highly recommend this for young Muslims), where, as usual, students peppered me with questions about how Muslims should deal with the ‘LGBTQ issue.’ I have presented my position several times before, once in Variety, once at ImanWire in the aftermath of the tragic Pulse Nightclub shooting, and again in…
The Presumption of Innocence When Too Many Victims Go Unheard
Like I always say, never a boring moment for Muslims in America. So there have been some controversies of late regarding women accusing high-profile Muslim scholars of sexual misconduct of various sorts. All this has unfolded as the dam of public opprobrium finally broke before the accumulated weight of dozens of reports that Hollywood mogul…
A Pre-Modern Defense of the Hadiths on Sodomy
This article is published in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34, no. 3 (2017). Since the journal uses transliteration conventions that I do not prefer, and since the published version introduced some minor errors into the text, I’m providing this version of the manuscript, which is more correct. Download PDF
Stoning and Hand Cutting—Understanding the Hudud and the Shariah in Islam
Often the only things people in the West associate with Islam are stoning and hand chopping. These images permeate our culture, from the trailer of hits like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) to straight-to-cable pablum like Escape: Human Cargo (1998) (again, in the trailer… ‘If you can’t live by their rules, you might die by…
“Moderate Islam” & Muslim American Leadership: Reflections Before the Deluge
Is it just me, or is being a Muslim in the US a rollercoaster ride? There’s so much to discuss! Top on the list is, of course, the imminent Trump administration. Like many in this country, since November 9th I’ve alternated between stupefaction, acute anxiety and invigoration for the… interactions (?) to come. This is an…
Guidelines For Muslim Political Engagement
For many, politics is a dirty word. This is understandable. At its best, it often requires compromising principles. At its worst, it perverts them altogether. But politics has also always been inevitable. At its simplest, it is about coordinating cooperation on some basic task, like bringing down a woolly mammoth or building a waterwheel. At…