January 24, 2014 (RNS) Viewers watching the American Football Conference championship game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots earlier this month may have seen a Best Buy commercial for a Sharp 60-inch television that seemed ordinary, but in one way was extraordinary. The ad shows a young, clean-shaven salesman named Mustafa talking about…
Test taker who had authorization interrupted due to her hijab Iman Abdulrazzak, an observant Muslim, realized at the last minute that she needed special permission to wear her headscarf while taking the Massachusetts bar exam. She scrambled to fax her request for an exemption to the ban on hats and other headwear. She called the…
On the night of June 29, two months after he was drafted by the Jets, Oday Aboushi stood before more than 700 people at the El Bireh Society convention in Arlington, Va., and discussed his journey to the N.F.L. Aboushi shared what it was like growing up in Brooklyn and Staten Island as one of…
BOSTON — As a young soldier in Bosnia, Azem Dervisevic led a platoon that helped keep the capital city of Sarajevo from falling to Serb forces during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Now, as a civilian in the Boston area, Dervisevic is still fighting for his homeland, but with culture instead of bullets. In June, he…
A group of interfaith leaders from Boston, including Jews, Muslims, and Christians, issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. “We call upon Hamas immediately to end all rocket attacks on Israel, and upon Israel immediately to end its military campaign in Gaza,” the statement said. The Jewish signatories of the statement included…
