Listening to Imam Yousef Kader's sermon and hearing him condemn Western society for its many excesses, I nodded along with the rest of the brothers. At the Sal Al Din Mosque of West London, England, we were used to harsh sermons from preachers whose views often seem at odds with the times in which we live. Hearing them speak about the decadence of the societ...
My name is Sean Des-Pres. I'm a young Black man of Haitian descent living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. Two years ago I graduated from the Police Foundations Program at Algonquin College. These days, I'm a fourth-year Criminology student at Carleton University. It's been a tough year so far. The first breath of the year 2012 has been bitterly c...
In the year 1221 A.D. the Kingdom of Spain, also known as Al-Andalus, is under Moorish rule, as the Spaniards called the Arabs who rule the Kingdom of Spain and much of the Iberian Peninsula. Omar Hafiz, the tall, dark and handsome son of an Arabian sheikh and Somali princess accompanied his cousin, Arabian prince Khaled Hafiz, from East Africa to the vastne...
In the eyes of the world, he's the bogeyman, the roughneck athlete, the wild man, the sexual animal. In my eyes, he is simply beautiful. My magnificent Black man. My name is Ariel Adewale, and I'm a young biracial woman of Nigerian and Lebanese descent living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. My parents and I hail from Southern Nigeria, and we've b...
Fidelma Anne O'Leary, former Irish Catholic and Professor of Biology at Saint Edwards University in Texas made waves when she converted to Islam. The tall, blonde-haired and green-eyed Anglo-Saxon woman certainly didn't look like the Western world's conception of the average Muslim woman. And for a short while, the story of her awakening, her subsequent reje...
The path I've chosen to walk is a difficult one, but I feel that it's the right one for me. My name is Tariq Rahim Alkaabi and I was born on the island of Failaka in the State of Kuwait. November 17, 1988, I came into the world. An undersized little brown bundle of joy, as my grandmother Bashirah would constantly remind me in later years. My father Abdul Alk...
Apostate! Kafir! Infidel! Marked for death. In the eyes of the Muslim community, I am all these things and more. My name is Aminata Khalid and I'm a young woman of Somali descent living in the City of Detroit, Michigan. For most of my life, home was the City of Montreal, Quebec. About a year ago, I had life all figured out. I had just graduated from the Univ...
Salome Rosenthal, that's my name. With such a moniker, I might as well have 'Jewish Broad' tattooed on my forehead. I was born in the City of Tel Aviv, Israel, to an American Christian mother and Israeli Jewish father. I was raised Jewish, though. My parents, Benjamin Rosenthal and Maeve O'Connell are divorced, have been for a decade. A lot of interfaith mar...
Standing over the body of Prince Khaled, General Abel raised his head to the heavens, arms wide and howled a cry of triumph which reverberated throughout the palace. Although not a large man, General Khaled had about him an air of quiet authority which hinted at ferocious inner strength. Five feet nine inches tall, slender and dark-skinned, clad in a suit of...
Alright, I can finally admit it to myself. I am a Muslim. I used to be one of those people who felt a strong dislike of Muslims, until I fell in love with one. It's funny how these things happen, huh? My name is Solomon Kingsley Henderson, although many of my friends have taken to calling me "King Suleiman" in recent times. It's my Muslim name, though it's n...