Muslim Institute Fellow Usama Hasan offers his perspective on Islamic reform by asking an age old question in an article re-printed from his personal blog. With the Name of Allah, All-Merciful, Most Merciful Have you stopped beating your wife? The plain truth about domestic violence and the 'wife-beating' verse of the Qur'an. Including a holistic study of important but ...

The Moroccan Family Code (MOUDAWANA) of February 5, 2004 An unofficial English translation of the original Arabic text provided by Human Rights Education Associates A literal translation was privileged rather than attempts to clarify, explain or interpret the intention of the legislator. We hope this translation will be useful to ...

For more than three decades now, I have given these three words a great deal of earnest consideration: Islam, Gender and Justice, writes Amina Wadud. I have also organised these three words in accordance to whatever priority I felt was most impelling at the time. Because of my enduring love for Islam as a member of the faith by volition, a convert in the 1970’s, the emphasis on Islam ...

There is great misunderstanding both among believers and non-believers about what it means to be religious, writes Asghar Ali Engineer. For most of the believers religion is a set of rituals, appearance or even a set of dogmas and superstitions whereas for non-believers (rationalists and empiricists) it is nothing but irrational beliefs, dogmas and superstitions, which impede human progress ...

Read the text of a lecture presented by the Muslim Institute and delivered by Dr Rajaa Naji el Mekkaoui, an expert in family law at the Université Mohamed V in Rabat and one of the architects of the mourchidat programme Moudawana (Morocco Family Code): Symbol of reconciliation between sacred religious texts and constraints of our time. The ...

The Idea of Community. The Big Society is being promoted as the flagship government policy even though no-one seems to have the first idea what it means, argues Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project. Commentator, Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian has described it as 'incomprehensibly vague'. Government minister, Francis Maude ...

Chandrika Parmar listens to debates exploring the concept of community at the Muslim Institutes’ Summer Conference. The Muslim Institute’s Summer Conference brought a diverse set of individuals together in Cardiff to explore ‘the idea of community’. The conference could be visualised as a conversation, mediation and dialogue with three forms of identity. Most of ...

Observers on the UK government’s approach to its Muslim communities were left rather in the dark after the surprise results in May this year, writes Hisham A Hellyer. Traditionally, the Liberal Democrat Party has been rather supportive of Muslim community organisations, and has stood squarely behind them when the state was deemed to have encroached on civil liberties (a frequent ...

To speak of Islam and music, for some, is to consider a rich history that stretches from the mysticism of North African Sufism, to classical Arabic and Persian modal systems, through to the popularised Qawwali of Pakistan and Punjab, explains Carl Morris. Others will perhaps focus on a traditional Islamic discourse, historically unsettled and divisive, that has long sought to ...