Vintage style Oklahoma USA stamp courtesy Shutterstock (http://shutr.bz/Zj6QTW)

“As Oklahomans, we’re part of this community, and our hearts just break for what happened,” said Adam Soltani, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of several Muslim groups collecting donations.

“We want to show the compassion and mercy that Islam teaches us.”

While several states have passed laws forbidding courts from considering Islamic law, or Shariah, in their decisions, Oklahoma is the only one to have done it twice. The Grand Mosque of Oklahoma City has been vandalized twice in the last two years, most recently on April 27.

A police captain in Tulsa even went to court to avoid having to attend a “Law Enforcement Appreciation Day” at the Islamic Society of Tulsa.

While Muslim-American organizations have routinely provided emergency aid following natural disasters, the Oklahoma tragedy is special because of the anti-Muslim sentiment in the state. Rather than retreating, however, Muslims increased their outreach, convinced that when Oklahomans meet Muslims, their prejudices will fade.

“I believe this helps break down barriers,” said Saad Mohammed, director of outreach at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City. “But dialogue and interaction are going to have to continue if these barriers are going to stay down.”

Mohammed was at home in suburban Moore, taking cover in a closet with his wife and teenage twin sons when the tornado bore down. Their home was completely destroyed, but the family survived.

Mohammed and his family are now staying with friends, but he’s also been involved with collecting and delivering donations. “It’s a shock, but we have to keep moving forward.”

The evening after the tornado hit, Muslim leaders gathered at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City mosque to start a Muslim community donation drive. In less than two days, they had collected thousands of food items, toiletries, bottled water, and other necessities.

The Islamic Circle of North America, an outreach group from Jamaica, N.Y., dispatched its Disaster Relief Team, which helps with debris removal and patching damaged houses. Soltani and his wife were helping with cleanup efforts less than 24 hours after the tornado struck.

“Anytime people come into contact with people of other faiths or ethnicities, it breaks down the stereotypes people have,” said the Rev. Joshua Leu of New Hope Christian Church in Oklahoma City, and a local interfaith activist. “Whenever you have a disaster like this, people come together and stop caring about those differences.”

Soltani agreed.

“People don’t care if you’re Muslim or not. That’s irrelevant,” Soltani said. “It’s a testament to how Oklahomans come together when things go bad.”

KRE/AMB END SACIRBEY

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Anti-Shariah demonstrators rally against a proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York. RNS photo courtesy Asterio Tecson

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But when Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a similar measure, one that its sponsor said would forbid Shariah, on April 19 of this year, no legal challenges were mounted.

Why the change?

The biggest difference is that the older bill — and others like it — singled out Islam and Shariah, but also raised concerns that they could affect Catholic canon law or Jewish law. Many early anti-Shariah bills also made references to international or foreign law, which worried businesses that the new bills would undermine contracts and trade with foreign companies.

The new bills, however, are more vague and mention only foreign laws, with no references to Shariah or Islam. They also make specific exceptions for international trade. All of that makes them harder to challenge as a violation of religious freedom.

“These bills don’t have any real-world effect. Their only purpose is to allow people to vilify Islam,” said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s legislative affairs director, of the more recent bills.

The change in language seems to have helped such bills advance in several states. And while these bills no longer single out Shariah, it is often understood that Shariah is the target, which many legislators make no secret of.

The driving force behind these new versions of anti-Shariah laws is “anti-Muslim bigotry plain and simple,” said Daniel Mach of the American Civil Liberties Union, speaking on a panel in Washington Thursday (May 16). To those agitating for such measures, “Islam is the face of the enemy,” he said.

To date, Oklahoma is the sixth state — joining Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee — to adopt a law prohibiting courts from using foreign or international law, with some exceptions, in their decisions.

This year, at least 36 anti-foreign law bills have been proposed in 15 states, down from 51 bills in 23 states in 2011. While most of this year’s anti-foreign law bills have failed, several others, have advanced:

• A North Carolina legislative committee on Wednesday sent a bill to the House that would prohibit consideration of foreign laws in custody and other family law cases.
• On May 9, the Missouri legislature passed an anti-foreign law bill that goes next to Gov. Jay Nixon, who has until July 14 to decide whether he will sign or veto it. Nixon, a Democrat, has not indicated what he will do, and did not reply to a request for comment.
• In Alabama, Indiana and Texas, anti-foreign law bills have made it through the state senates, and are now either in house committees or awaiting full floor votes.
• An anti-foreign law bill in Florida that needed a two-thirds majority to pass fell one vote short, 25-14. Besides Florida, anti-foreign law bills have been introduced but were defeated, died, or are languishing in Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Despite the losses, David Yerushalmi, the Washington-based lawyer who drafted template legislation used for the anti-Shariah and anti-foreign law bills, said the anti-Shariah movement “is growing every day” and expects more states to adopt such bills in the future.

“People see the threat and also know that a bill that simply protects U.S. citizens and residents from constitutionally offensive foreign laws and judgments can only be a good thing,” Yerushalmi said.

But CAIR’s Saylor said that victory may prove elusive for the anti-Shariah forces. By stripping all references to Islamic law, the anti-Shariah movement has failed to restrict Muslim religious rights. “In terms of substance, it’s already been beaten,” he said.

Nevertheless, some observers worry that even these watered-down bills could still be interpreted in ways that impinge on Muslims’ religious freedom.

For example, according to the Gavel to Gavel website that covers state legislatures, many of the new anti-foreign law bills specify that the prohibition on courts using foreign laws applies only to certain case types, such as family law or domestic relations. Shariah, as well as Jewish law, is widely used in these types of cases.

“While the foreign law bans are certainly less of a frontal assault on religious freedom than the anti-Shariah bills, they continue to raise concerns about bias towards minority faiths,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

“The bans cast a cloud of uncertainty over a myriad of arrangements, including family and business-related matters, simply because they have foreign or religious origins.”

She added that some bans on foreign law seem to require judges to reject any foreign law or judgment that comes from a country that does not protect rights in the same way the United States does, even if the case being considered does not raise any rights concerns.

“This could deprive many Jewish and Muslim couples of a wide range of benefits — lower tax rates, immigration benefits for foreign partners and the ability to make life-and-death decisions on behalf of each other in medical emergencies,” Patel said.

Even CAIR won’t rule out the possibility of future legal challenges.

“If someone tries to use these laws to undermine a person’s religious rights, we’re keeping all of our legal options on the table,” Saylor said.

(Lauren Markoe contributed to this report from Washington.)

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“The World’s Muslims” report looks at Muslim views across seven categories: Islamic law; religion and politics; morality; women; relations among Muslims; interfaith relations; and religion, science, and pop culture. There is also a special section on U.S. Muslims.

Men pray toward the direction of Kabah in Mecca during 1:30 prayer at the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City on Tuesday afternoon, June 26, 2012. RNS photo by Sally Morrow

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Of the countries surveyed, only a majority of Muslims in America — 56 percent — believe people of other faiths can go to heaven; by contrast, that figure among U.S. Christians is about 64 percent. U.S. Muslims are also less likely than Muslims abroad to believe in evolution, sharing views that are closer to those of U.S. Christians.

On suicide bombing, 81 percent of U.S. Muslims said it was never justified, 7 percent said it was justified to “defend Islam,” and 1 percent said it was “sometimes justified.”

Globally, most Muslims also reject suicide bombing, although significant minorities in several countries say such acts are at least sometimes justified, including 26 percent of Muslims in Bangladesh, 29 percent in Egypt, and 39 percent in Afghanistan.

At least half of Muslims in most countries surveyed say they worry about religious extremists in their own country, including two-thirds or more of Muslims in Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Indonesia.

The percentage of Muslims who say they want Shariah, or Islamic law, to be “the official law of the land” varies widely around the world, from fewer than 8 percent in Azerbaijan to 99 percent in Afghanistan. “Solid majorities” in most predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, however, favor the establishment of Islamic law. (The report did not ask the same question of American Muslims.)

That view did not preclude religious tolerance, the survey found, as most Muslims also favor religious freedom for people of other faiths.

The reason for the variation? “Muslims have different understandings of what Shariah means in practice,” said James Bell, the Pew Research Center’s director of international survey research, adding that support for Shariah cut across age, gender, and economic groups.

In most countries surveyed, majorities of Muslim women and men agreed that a wife is always obliged to obey her husband, including more than 90 percent in Morocco, Tunisia, Afghanistan and Indonesia.

The 157-page report is based on more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews conducted in more than 80 languages with self-identifying Muslims in 39 countries and territories. The report combines findings from a 2011-2012 survey of 24 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe and a 2008-2009 survey of 15 other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Some friends, she thought.

“Like it was a hobby I took up when I got married and now I’m supposed to drop it,” said Hunt Ahmed, president of the Chicago Islamic Microfinance Project, which she founded with two colleagues in 2009.

Hunt Ahmed, 45, is part of a growing sorority of female American converts to Islam, especially those who are or were married to Muslim men, who must deal with the perception that they converted to Islam because of domineering boyfriends or husbands.

The stereotype was revived in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, when news emerged that the wife of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Katherine Russell, converted to Islam after meeting Tsarnaev in 2009 or 2010 when she was about 21.

Tsarnaev, 26, was shot and killed during a standoff with Boston police while his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, was taken into custody and now faces a raft of terrorism charges.

“It’s not just Fox. A lot of the media have portrayed her as someone who was brainwashed and who didn’t know what she was doing,” said Edlyn Sammanasu, who was born to Catholic parents and started studying Islam when she met her Muslim husband in college, and converted when she was 21.

“When I saw the coverage, I thought this was ridiculous,” said Sammanasu, now 32, a technical writer in Fremont, Calif.

Seema Imam, an education professor at National Louis University in Lisle, Ill., has seen the same thing. She grew up as an observant Methodist but converted to Islam 40 years ago at age 17.

Malika MacDonald Rushdan, who converted in 1995 after divorcing her Christian husband, made her “shahada,” or declaration of faith, at the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge. Photo courtesy Malika MacDonald

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“Whenever someone talks about Muslim converts being involved in something negative, it’s done in a way in which people say, ‘Be careful, look what happens when you become Muslim,’” she said.

Converts to Islam are as diverse as the rest of America, racially and ethnically, as well as in their interpretations of the faith. Some female converts wear a headscarf, some don’t. What they share is the perception from others that they are incapable of making their own choice in a decision that involved substantial spiritual wrestling.

It’s as insulting as it is inaccurate, they say.

“These reports are misogynous in nature, reducing women to creatures who cannot think for themselves,” said Malika MacDonald Rushdan, who converted in 1995 after divorcing her Christian husband. She made her “shahada,” or declaration of faith, at the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, which the Tsarnaev brothers occasionally attended.

“My faith, by definition, is for the Creator, not for my husband,” wrote Ohio attorney Sarah Anjum, who converted almost 10 years ago, while she was in college studying Islamic political movements and Arabic, and four years before she met her husband.

While some American Muslim women converted while single, those who started reading about Islam after meeting future husbands are incredulous over the idea that they converted to please them.

When Kelly Wentworth, 35, told her Yemeni boyfriend that she was interested in learning about Islam, he pointed her to a Muslim professor who taught at Tennessee Tech, where the two were students at the time. When she later told him she wanted to convert, he didn’t celebrate. Photo courtesy Kelly Wentworth

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When Kelly Wentworth, 35, told her Yemeni boyfriend that she was interested in learning about Islam, he pointed her to a Muslim professor who taught at Tennessee Tech, where the two were students at the time. When she later told him she wanted to convert, he didn’t celebrate.

“He was worried people would think that I converted because of him, or that I was being forced to convert,” said Wentworth, a software engineer in Atlanta and board member of Muslims for Progressive Values, a national advocacy group. “The stereotype is out there. That’s something I fight with now.”

Wentworth became so worried about how friends and family would judge her after the Katherine Russell stories that she couldn’t sleep for several nights.

A 2011 study from the Pew Research Center found that about 20 percent of an estimated 1.8 million Muslims in America are converts, while a 2007 Pew study found that 49 percent of converts converted by the age of 21. The 2007 study also found that 58 percent of converts converted for religious reasons, and 18 percent for family and marriage reasons.

Female Muslim converts acknowledge that they have heard about Muslim women trapped in abusive relationships, but say that such relationships affect women of other faiths as well.

“That has nothing to do with religion,” Wentworth said. “That’s a problem with personality.”

Katherine Wilson, a convert and Rhode Island resident who works with female victims of violence and sexual assault, said the media, by focusing on Russell’s faith, missed a chance to speak about domestic violence. She believes Muslim women converts are perceived negatively because some people see their choice of faith as a knock against their own decisions.

“I believe this is partially due to white privilege in that there is not an understanding why an ‘all-American girl’ would give up her privilege-assumed, carefree lifestyle,” said Wilson. “I think it bothers people that an ‘all American woman’ would walk away from what they think is a great life, which is a stereotype within itself.”

While such stereotypes still annoy these women, many say they have grown tired of having to explain their decisions to convert. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to change minds.

“There will always be those who judge based upon ignorance. They are of no concern to me,” said MacDonald Rushdan. “I will keep on doing what I’ve always done. I will not apologize for being a God-fearing woman whose faith provides her with inner peace and contentment.”

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That’s according to a poll released Friday (April 12) by the Arab American Institute in Washington D.C.

Morsi’s term has been dogged by charges that he opts for authoritarian measures such as martial law. Muslim-Christian clashes have also shadowed his term; there were clashes on April 5 in the town of Khosus that killed four Coptic Christians and one Muslim, and violence also marred the April 7 funeral for the Copts who were killed in that conflict.

According to the Institute’s poll of 2,300 likely voters, only 36 percent of Americans had favorable views of Egypt, down from 66 percent in 1997. At least some of the decline has been attributed to the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s parliamentary elections in January 2012, and to Morsi himself, who won the presidency last June by a 52-48 percent margin.

The poll, which was conducted in March, also found a huge gap in Americans’ favorability ratings of the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslims themselves.

Americans had far more favorable views of Muslims than the Muslim Brotherhood. The survey found that 40 percent of Americans had favorable views of Muslims, while only four percent of Americans saw the election victories of the Muslim Brotherhood as a positive development.

Other key findings from the survey:

• More than half of Americans (53 percent) believe the Muslim Brotherhood is not committed to democracy while 15 percent said they were.
• Nearly one-third of Americans,(32 percent) said they would be less likely to visit an Egypt governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, compared to five percent who said they would be more likely to visit.
• Almost half of Americans (47 percent) said the U.S. should stop providing financial aid to Egypt while it is governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, while 22 percent the aid should continue.

“President Mohamed Morsi needs to acknowledge the deep and longstanding problem of sectarian violence in Egypt and take decisive steps to address it before it escalates further,” said Nadim Houry, deputy director for the North Africa and Middle East program at Human Rights Watch.

In a statement, Houry also called on the Egyptian government to reform laws that discriminate against Christians’ right to worship.

Egypt’s new constitution, which took effect in December 2012, explicitly recognizes the right of Christians to have their own places of worship. But the Morsi government has not erased an earlier law that requires Christians, and no other religious group, to obtain a presidential decree in order to build a new church.

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Detail of St. Francis of Assisi from “Madonna Enthroned with the Child, St. Francis and four Angels,” a fresco executed by Giovanni Cimabue between 1278-80 for the lower church of St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, Italy. RNS file photo courtesy of the Custodian of St. Francis Basilica in Assisi.

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(RNS) Just as many Catholics have connected Pope Francis’ humility and austere lifestyle with that of St. Francis of Assisi, those seeking clues on the new pontiff’s approach to Christian-Muslim relations see another example in the iconic namesake.

In a little known episode in 1219, St. Francis left the camp of the crusaders besieging the walled Egyptian city of Damietta and crossed enemy lines to meet with Malik al-Kamil, the young sultan of Egypt.

“I can’t believe that the choice of his namesake is only about deference to poor people, as important and admirable as that is,” said the Rev. William Hugo, a Capuchin Franciscan brother and priest in St. Joseph, Wis. “The story of Francis seeking out Al-Kamil would surely raise up in Pope Francis the desire to reach out and be in relationship with those suffering a separation or (who are) excluded.”

A desert encounter

Scholars are divided, however, on whether it was peace or proselytizing that motivated St. Francis. The earliest biographies of him depict a more hard line Christian who sought to convert Al-Kamil.

“Francis’s goal was, of course, conversion, not coexistence. And while some 13th-century Christian commentators criticized the crusades for their violence, Francis was not among those critics. His joining up with the 5th Crusade suggests a tacit acceptance of crusading,” said Philip Daileader, a history professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Many later biographies, however, say St. Francis’ motivation was more dovish.

“He wanted to see the sultan because he was pained, and he felt guilty,” said Jon Sweeney, author of the new book, “Francis of Assisi In His Own Words: The Essential Writings.” “He saw the carnage and it was his church that was doing it.”

Conversion or coexistence?

Chris van Gorder, a scholar of Christian-Muslim relations at Baylor University, asserts that St. Francis, a former soldier, was driven by compassion, a hatred for war, a desire to learn from others, and “to build missionistic bridges of reconciliation and healing.”

“St. Francis of Assisi was a confident evangelist and a fearless peacemaker who was appalled at the rapacious violence of his era,” said van Gorder.

But even if St. Francis’ goal was conversion, it was not an end unto itself, but a means to peace.

“We’re seeing the church interpret Francis in modern times as a bridge,” said Paul Moses, author of “The Saint and the Sultan,” a 2009 book which explores St. Francis’ pivotal engagement with Islam. “To Muslims ears, the choice of Francis for a name should sound good.”

Andrea Stanton, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver, said peace was Francis’ motive.

St. Francis of Assisi (seen here in a stained glass window at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Honolulu, Hawaii) is the patron saint of animals. RNS file RNS photo by Kevin Eckstrom

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“His attempt to convert the sultan was a conflict resolution exercise: if the sultan embraced Christianity, the wars would end, because a Christian would govern Jerusalem,” Stanton said.

What makes Francis’ trip all the more improbable is that Muslims were depicted as blood-thirsty heretics inspired by the devil, and venturing into their camp meant certain death.

“Attitudes toward Muslims at that time were hostile beyond imaginings,” said van Gorder. “St. Francis was prepared to be a martyr and was warned by his colleagues that there was a price for the head of a Christian in the sultan’s court, and that his death would almost be certain if he persisted in his plans to go to the sultan’s camp.”

Although there are no first-hand accounts of the meeting, historians say it had a tremendous influence on both men. Al-Kamil, known as a tolerant ruler who offered religious freedom to Christians, received St. Francis hospitably, allowing him to stay in his court for several days and even preach.

The two talked about religion, war and other issues. During his stay, St. Francis made no requests of the sultan, except shortly before he departed, when he asked for a meal, possibly with the hope of breaking bread with Al-Kamil.

“The hagiography portrays the two men as having a profound impact on each other. They parted in peace with each other and gained respect for the other,” said Hugo.

A model for 21st-century dialogue

The visit had a profound impact on St. Francis, who returned to Italy the next year, and made a monumental change to his nascent order’s rules. Before the visit, Franciscans were allowed to engage Muslims with the goal of converting them. After the trip, he revised the rule to say it was also permissible to live peaceably among Muslims and under Muslim rule, without trying to convert them.

“That was revolutionary at that time,” said Moses.

While it’s not clear if Pope Francis will look to St. Francis for interfaith guidance, he wouldn’t be the first pontiff to do so.  In 1986, Pope John Paul II led the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, inviting religious leaders from several different faiths to the saint’s birthplace. Benedict, who was not a big supporter of the World Day of Prayer,  according to Moses, returned for the 25th anniversary in 2011.

“Pope John Paul II looked to Francis as a figure that can provide inspiration in today’s world as to how we approach other religions,” said Moses. “The pope didn’t just pick that site because it’s easy to get to.”

KRE/YS END SACIRBEY

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A new 56-page report, “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims,” details how the NYPD’s covert surveillance caused Muslims to refrain from activism and change their appearance so as not to appear too Muslim, and sowed suspicion among community members.

A man prays at the Islamic Cultural Center in Newark, which was included on a surveillance list by the New York Police Department to monitor Muslims’ businesses, mosques and community centers. RNS photo by Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger.

As a result, the Monday (March 11) report asserts, trust between Muslims and police has broken down. The program, in which NYPD policemen secretly visited mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, and student and civic associations beyond New York’s five boroughs, was established in 2001 but uncovered by The Associated Press in 2011.

A spokesperson for the NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.

New York leaders, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have defended the NYPD program as a necessary post-9/11 weapon against terrorism. In New Jersey, where much of the spying occurred, Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa concluded there was no evidence that NYPD activities violated New Jersey’s civil or criminal laws.

The groups behind the report said Muslims have reached out to the NYPD to set up a venue, such as a town hall-style meeting, where they could talk about Muslim concerns about the NYPD program, but that their requests were rebuffed.

“Because nothing has happened, that’s the direct reason for this report,” said Nermeen Arastu, a report author and pro bono lawyer for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which contributed to the report.

“Muslims impacted by this haven’t had a chance to express their views, and we wanted to give them a platform where they could talk about how this program has chilled constitutionally protected activities.”

The report was also produced by the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition and the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project of the City University of New York School of Law.

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Seventh crusade 1248. Photo by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Vie et miracles de Saint Louis [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“What the pope says or doesn’t say can have enormous consequences on such relations,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, an organization dedicated to improving Muslim-Western relations, and the founder of the controversial so-called Ground Zero mosque in New York.

The selection of the 266th pope comes at a critical juncture in Muslim-Catholic relations, which have been marred by persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, Islamophobia in Western countries, Western military action in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and rioting between Muslims and Christians across Africa.

While many Muslims said they saw an improvement in Muslim-Catholic relations under Pope John Paul II, they say Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy was more problematic.

Most worrisome, Muslims say, was in 2006 when Benedict spoke at the University of Regensburg in Germany and quoted a 14^th-century Byzantine emperor who said Islam’s Prophet Muhammad had only brought “evil and inhuman” things to the world, and that Islam was “spread by the sword.” Those remarks touched off a series of deadly riots in several Muslim countries.

Muslims were also concerned by the Vatican’s opposition to Turkey joining the European Union, and in replacing Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, a British-born Islam expert who was seen as friendly with Muslims, as head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 2006.

Since then, Benedict made several trips to Islamic countries, including Turkey, which repaired some of the damage, and many Muslims give Benedict high marks for his efforts to re-engage Muslims.

“Pope Benedict XVI made a significant effort to reconcile with Muslims after his Regensburg speech,” tweeted Ingrid Mattson, chair of Islamic studies at Huron University College in Ontario and a former president of the Islamic Society of North America.

Ebrahim Moosa, an Islamic studies professor at Duke University, said the Regensburg fiasco showed the need for improved ties. “The Vatican is invested in good relations with the Muslim world, and under a new pope there is no reason to believe that it would be any different,” he said.

Muhhamad Shafiq says a prayer into the microphone during 1:30 prayer at the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City mosque on Tuesday afternoon, June 26, 2012. RNS photo by Sally Morrow

While many Muslims acknowledge the interfaith efforts Benedict made, many also hope a successor will be more like John Paul II.

“This pope had not really been a bridge-builder and there will be hope that the next one will be someone who tries to heal wounds and build bridges,” said Adil Najam, vice chancellor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences, and former director of Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.

Some Muslims believe that a pope from Africa or Asia, where Muslims and Christians live alongside each other in sometimes volatile conditions, would benefit Muslim-Christian relations.

“There could be a lot of opportunity. A young pope could be more in tune with the globalized world and all the interfaith activity that takes place,” said Qamar-ul Huda, an expert on religious conflict and reconciliation at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. “They live in pluralistic societies, and have to have good relations with Muslims so their communities get along on a day-to-day basis.”

Chris van Gorder, an expert in Muslim-Christian relations at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, named three possible papal contenders with firsthand experience in Islam:

• Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, 71, founded an organization called “Oasis” designed to promote Muslim-Catholic dialogue and has spoken and written extensively on the need for Muslims and Christians to mutually confront secularism and social justice issues.
• Cardinal Francis Arinze of strife-torn Nigeria has been “a leading light in the Vatican about promoting respect for Muslims,” van Gorder said. “But he’s now 80, so it’s not likely he would become pope.”
• Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, 64, had a paternal uncle who was Muslim. As president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, he has “supported Muslims and Christians working together to promote improved moral and civic society,” van Gorder said.

While many Catholic leaders acknowledged Benedict’s missteps and the need for greater dialogue, many also said Muslims could do more to address the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries.

In 2011, when Benedict condemned Muslim attacks against Christian communities in Egypt, Iraq and Nigeria, officials at the renowned Al-Azhar University in Cairo called off dialogue with the Vatican, citing the pope’s “insults.”

“A new pope will not just want to talk about love and peace. He will want to talk about the difficult subjects, too,” said the Rev. Patrick J. Ryan, a Jesuit priest and professor of religion and society at Fordham University in New York.

Rauf agreed that Muslims need to do more about the persecution of Christians in Muslim nations. “We can’t do enough to combat the militancy that you see in Muslim countries in various parts of the world against their fellow countrymen who are Christian,” said Rauf.

A key appointment will be who the new pope chooses to advise him on interfaith dialogue. Fitzgerald was replaced by French Cardinal Paul Poupard, who served until September 2007, when he was replaced by the current prefect, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran. Last July, Benedict named another Islam expert, the Rev. Miguel Ayuso Guixot, as the No. 2 official at the interfaith office.

“He’s a man of great capability,” said Ryan. “He’s a name to be watched. He will be very influential.”

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“The Legacy of Timbuktu” was scheduled to open April 20 at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas, but curators from the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, Miss., which is organizing the exhibit, could not travel to the Saharan city to retrieve several manuscripts and artifacts it planned to display.

Instead, the Fort Worth museum will host a “preview” exhibit featuring 10 manuscripts and several artifacts loaned from the Mississippi museum’s permanent Timbuktu collection. That exhibit opens June 1, while the traveling exhibit will start Jan. 1, 2015, said Okolo Rashid, executive director of the Mississippi museum.

The exhibit, curators hope, will undo stereotypes of illiterate African societies with only oral traditions, and introduce visitors to a little-known aspect of Islamic culture.

“We were very disappointed, but there was a lot of fighting, a lot of destruction, and there was no way we could go,” said Rashid. “Our main goal now is to get ready for June, but we also have to figure out when we can go to Mali.”

Although smaller than originally planned, the preview exhibit still includes a plethora of historic documents, including a 14^th-century manuscript about Moses written by members of Timbuktu’s Jewish community, and another 14^th-century text about interfaith relations. These manuscripts were loaned to the Jackson museum by the Mamma Haidara Memorial Library in Timbuktu, which is also helping organize the exhibit.

Some 1 million ancient documents have been discovered in Timbuktu in recent years, providing scholars with a treasure trove of ancient Islamic culture. That legacy, however, has been threatened by al-Qaida-linked extremists who last year seized control of large parts of Mali, including Timbuktu.

According to local residents, the extremists destroyed tens of thousands of centuries-old manuscripts and razed Muslim Sufi shrines, which extremists view as heretical.

The Malian army, aided by French and African Union soldiers, has in recent weeks recaptured most of the lost territory, but has also faced accusations of arbitrarily killing men with long beards and thawbs, long robes that are often worn by some observant Muslims.

The exhibit will also include videos and interactive displays that explore how Islam came to West Africa, Islamic-African culture, America’s connections to Timbuktu, and demonstrations on how these manuscripts were produced in the 14^th century.

Sponsors include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kellogg Foundation and the Nissan Foundation, among others.

The post Fighting threatens Islamic artifacts in troubled Timbuktu appeared first on Religion News Service.

Ever since she was a little girl, Savannah Uqdah longed to pose for pictures and strut down a runway with flashbulbs bursting. But as an observant Muslim who didn’t want to violate Islam’s tenets on modesty, the aspiring model assumed that designers wouldn’t hire someone who was unwilling to show some skin. RNS photo courtesy Underwraps Agency.

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Uqdah shelved her modeling dreams and instead expressed herself through the fashions she wore.

Nailah Lymus started her fashion label, Amirah Creations, in 2004. She has met and heard about lots of Muslim women who were interested in modeling, but didn’t pursue it because they assumed they would be asked to model clothing that violated their beliefs.

So during last February’s New York Fashion Week, Lymus launched Underwraps Agency, which connects modesty-minded models — both Muslim and non-Muslim — with designers.

“I wanted to promote modest attire — that’s really what the agency is about — and not feeling like you have to show everything to be a model and to make it far,” said Lymus, who lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Since then, her agency has contracted with four Muslim female models, getting them work in photo and video shoots, as well as runway shows during Fashion Week.

One of them is Uqdah, whom Lymus knew from the Brooklyn mosque they both attended, who will be modeling for the plus-size label Ann Nahari during the upcoming Fashion Week (Feb. 7-14) in New York.

“I was like, where do I sign (up)?” Uqdah said. “It was a dream come true.”

For now, Lymus is mostly (but not entirely) focusing on Muslim models because she believes Muslims are underrepresented in the industry. But she also believes that the demand for modest clothing cuts across religions and cultures, and ultimately wants Underwraps to be known more for its modesty than its Muslim orientation.

As an example, she points to Kylie Bisutti, a Victoria’s Secret model who abruptly retired from lingerie modeling last February, citing her Christian beliefs and desire to be a good wife. She still models less racy clothing.

“I don’t want to be known as a sex symbol or lingerie model. I desire to be known as a woman who fears the Lord,” Bisutti wrote on her website last year.

Islamic views on modeling vary. Scholars from the venerable Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in India issued a fatwa in 2010 condemning female modeling as un-Islamic because it puts the female body on exhibit. A few fashion magazines in some Muslim countries will not show women’s faces.

But Imam Talal Eid, an Islamic law expert in Boston and former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said modeling is acceptable as long as the models maintain their modesty.

“You have to show the clothes. You can’t have fashion without models,” said Eid, whose daughter is a designer with Calvin Klein in New York.

Rania Iswarani, editor at the Muslim style blog Fashfaith.com, disagreed that modeling draws improper attention to women. “People perhaps do pay attention to them, but NOT to their skin. The body is covered. So these people are attracted to the clothes Muslim women are wearing,” Iswarani wrote in an email.

Either way, industry veterans say there’s a need for modesty-minded models.

“I’m in constant need of models for my company and a Muslim modeling agency would help me profusely,” said Melanie Elturk, CEO and chief designer of HauteHijab.com, an online Muslim fashion retailer in Chicago. “We do display the vast majority of our products on dress forms instead of models to try and avoid any controversy that Muslim models may stir up, but some products just need to be displayed on a human body in order to show what the piece will look like.”

Underwraps’ Lymus argues that there’s greater demand for modesty than perhaps the fashion industry realizes, and that it will need models to respond. Since launching Underwraps, Lymus has received more than 400 queries from aspiring Muslim models from several different countries, including the U.S., Indonesia, Great Britain, and Australia.

“There are a lot of individuals, Muslim or not, who wear modest clothing,” Lymus said. “You’re going to be at your best when you’re comfortable in your own skin, not when your uncomfortable with what you’re wearing.”

Lymus’ agency and Muslim designers are banking on what they believe is a huge market for fashion in the Muslim world. Barjis Chohan, a British Muslim designer who studied under the legendary Vivienne Westwood, estimated the market at $96 million, noting that New York-style fashion weeks have started in cities like Istanbul, Cairo, Karachi and Jakarta.

“As a model, you want to be as marketable as possible,” Lymus said. “And if you’re a Muslim model who might wear a headscarf, you’re limited because not many designers want models with headscarves.”

But she added. “I haven’t launched the agency to conform to what the existing industry is doing.”

There are many famous Muslim models who didn’t worry about religious restrictions, including:

• Iman Abdulmajid, born in Somalia, considered the first black supermodel.
• Yasmeen Ghauri, born in Montreal to a Pakistani Muslim father and a German mother, modeled for Victoria’s Secret, Versace, Chanel, and other major brands.
• Fawzia Mohamed of Egypt, who represented her country in the Miss Universe 2006 pageant.
• Wafah Dufour, better known as Osama bin Laden’s niece, who posed provocatively for GQ in 2006.
• Hanaa Ben Abdesslem, a Tunisian supermodel whose clients include Lancome and Benetton.
• Fatima Siad, Somali-Ethiopian model from Boston, who placed third on “America’s Next Top Model” in 2008.

The post Modeling agency helps demure Muslims keep it ‘Underwraps’ appeared first on Religion News Service.