A new study based on focus groups with 60 lay Muslims in Ottawa, Washington and Britain claims that imams are out of touch with the needs of Western Muslims, and divorced from the struggles their congregants face in secular society. Karim Karim, director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, is the author of…
The Créteil Mosque, the first “real” mosque in the Val-de-Marne with a dome and a minaret, officially opened its doors two years after the Union of Muslim Associations of Créteil (UAMC, or Union des associations musulmanes de Créteil) began construction. The president of the UAMC, Karim Benaïssa welcomed local Muslims to the 550 m2 prayer…
For Karim Z_ribi, the highlight was shaking the hand of Barack Obama. For Ali Zahi, it was meeting his childhood hero, basketball star Magic Johnson. And Mohamed Hamidi was surprised to find a mosque in Washington that was bigger than the one in his parents’ village in Algeria. Hamidi is a well-known blogger, Zahi is…
Arab and Muslim candidates fared poorly in the first round of French municipal elections, with only one elected to a local office and few others with opportunity in the second round of voting. Running on the Socialist slate, Samia Ghali won District 8 in Marseille, the country’s second largest city. Ghali became the first Muslim…
