I am here to talk to Yusuf Islam, the Muslim singer and humanitarian formerly known as Sixties icon Cat Stevens, about his charity concert for child refugees at Westminster’s Central Hall tonight. But the mass shooting at Florida gay club Pulse by an alleged Islamic State terrorist has overtaken us. “This guy is demented, a…
April 22, 2014 A young man drummed on a bucket as a portable speaker played the uber-upbeat song “Happy,” Pharrell Williams’s anthem to joy and to the pure communal value of boogying in the street that has engendered countless copycat videos across the globe. Because I’m happy — Clap along if you feel like…
(RNS) Islamophobic or empowering? Those are among the reactions to a new Diesel jeans ad featuring a heavily tattooed, topless white woman wearing a redesigned, denim burqa. The slogan next to her: “I Am Not What I Appear To Be.” Racist and condescending are among the criticisms that have been leveled at the ad, created…
Mr. Bloomberg was keen to take on the impossible, or at least the seemingly so. And he did. A man whose public personality came in a plain brown wrapper presided during an era of radical change and rebirth in the city, much of it fostered by his administration. On March 15 of last year,…
In the early 1970s, singers such as the late Larry Norman transformed Christian music from hymns to rock ‘n’ roll by asking one simple question: Why should the devil have all the good music? Now a group of young Muslim musicians is doing the same for Islamic songs known as “nasheeds,” by combining hip-hop, country…
