Some Alternatives to New Year’s Football Games [Social Justice Documentaries]

http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/some-alternatives-new-year%E2%80%99s-football-games-0

THE BIG HOUSE -- البيت الكبير

"Leaders of many faiths gather at Temple Israel" [feat. Imam Suhaib Webb]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/01/18/leaders-many-faiths-gather-temple-israel/4Ri47rlqzOqP3ZaSmkfdOL/story.html

"Requiem for a Movement" By Daniel Gordis [on the Conservative Jewish Movement]

Important read, especially relevant given many Muslim American thinkers' reference to the history/parallel? of the Jewish American community (for ex. see Zareena Grewal in her section towards the end of the book on Yasir Qadhi and Al Maghrib Institute in her recent Islam Is a Foreign Country).

http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/566/requiem-for-a-movement/

Malcolm X’s Daughter (Ilyasah Shabazz) Pens Novel About Father

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/01/12/malcolm-xs-daughter-pens-novel-about-father/

Amazon link for Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X

Muslim American Youth

Central to this book are Muslim American youth at the dawn of the twenty-first century who are preoccupied by this conundrum, one that American Muslims have been grappling with for decades. What makes Islam belong to a place? Can Islam be an American religion without being compromised, diluted, assimilated? Living with both the possibility and the impossibility of Islam being an American religion, American Muslims have internalized what the great black scholar W. E. B. Du Bois referred to as double consciousness, "a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double classes, must give rise to double worlds and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense or to revolt, to hypocrisy or to radicalism." [12] Through the journeys of American Muslim seekers abroad, through their studies, struggles, and soul-wrenching debates about their place in the US and in the world, Islam Is a Foreign Country offers an account of deeply religious and politically disaffected American Muslim youth. They are not "homegrown" terrorists, but they fit what has become the de facto profile of "radicalized" Muslim youth, in their opposition to the political status quo, their global vision of justice, their attachments to Muslims abroad, and their sense of alienation from the American mainstream. Perhaps it is their idealism that is most radical, the persistence with which they desire a home.

Zareena Grewal, Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority. (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 7.

David Coolidge: American Muslims and Native Americans: Initial Thoughts

http://amercycase.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/american-muslims-and-native-americans-initial-thoughts/

What Proofs about God Really Prove by Nathan Schneider

Great read. On contemporary existence of God debates, with an extended look on Hayy ibn Yaqzan.

http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dogma/what-proofs-about-god-really-prove/

"Before he was a Muslim,

Zayd ibn Sa'na came to him [the Prophet Muhammad] demanding that he repay a debt to him. He [Zayd] pulled his [the Prophet's] garment from his shoulder, seized hold of him and behaved coarsely to the Prophet, saying, "Banu 'Abdu'l-Muttalib, you are procrastinating." 'Umar chased him off and spoke harshly to him while the Prophet merely smiled. The Messenger of Allah said, "'Umar, he and I need something else from you. Command me to repay well and command him to ask for his debt well." Then he said, "I still owe him three." 'Umar commanded that he be paid and he added twenty sa' more since he had alarmed him. That according to Zayd's explanation, was the reason him becoming Muslim. He said, "There were only two remaining signs of prophethood which I had not yet recognized in Muhammad or noticed: forbearance overcoming quick-temperedness and extreme ignorance only increasing him in forbearance. I tested him for these and I found him as described. [Al-Bayhaqi, Ibn Hibban, at-Tabarani and Aby Nu'aym. Its isnad is sound.

-Muhammad: Messenger of Allah: Ash-Shifa of Qadi 'Iyad, translated by Aisha Bewley, pg. 57

On the Prophet's forbearance, long-suffering and pardon

It is related that when the Prophet had his tooth broken and his face cut on the day of the Battle of Uhud, it was practically unbearable for his Companions. They said, "If only you would invoke a curse against them." He replied, "I was not sent to curse, but I was sent as a summoner and as a mercy. O Allah, guide my people for they do not know."

-Muhammad: Messenger of Allah: Ash-Shifa of Qadi 'Iyad, translated by Aisha Bewley, pg. 55