Why Are So Many Imams Leaving the Masjid?

為何美國許多清真寺教長離職？美國清真寺管理探討

The Masjid

Across the United States masajid (mosques) have expanded in physical size, improved mass communication via websites and social media accounts, begun to offer live-streaming for Friday khutbas (sermons) online, and have improved women’s prayer areas. But in recent times, many imams have left their posts, leaving communities and trend followers to speculate and ask, “Why?” Was it the imam’s ego or a salary dispute or are they just becoming too impatient?

No, this wave of resignations is a symptom of a greater problem: while incoming imams treat their position as a profession by becoming increasingly qualified, the masjid board has not taken the same strides in becoming trained in non-profit management. Those who run the masjid and supervise the imams’ affairs are still volunteers with, generally speaking, no expertise on how to manage non-profit organizations.   As a result, the operational structure of the masjid is not equipped to manage the imam, the other employees, or to draft and execute long-term plans with a vision for the changing needs of the community. Masjid reform must take place to not only bring stability by retaining their imams but by also allowing for future growth, and attracting Muslims of all backgrounds and ages.

Obama, Thomas Jefferson and the fascinating history of Founding Fathers defending Muslim rights

美國建國初期雖然在法律上有談到穆斯林，給予不同宗教信仰的自由與保障，但這段文章重點是放在為何「宗教自由」會是那個時期討論的焦點。

Thomas Jefferson, lithographed and published by H. Robinson, N.Y., created between 1840 and 1851. (Library of Congress)

This post has been updated with President Obama's comments. The Fix originally wrote about Thomas Jefferson and Muslims in December.

Muslims are at the center of a roiling debate over religious freedom in the United States. But they've actually been a part of that heated conversation from the very beginning of the nation's founding.

"Islam has always been a part of America,"

President Obama said during his first visit to a U.S. mosque Wednesday.

Indeed, a number of the Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Muslims — along with other believers outside the prevailing Protestant mainstream — as they outlined the parameters of religious freedom and equal protection.

Al-Ijtihad

對於Ijtihad的定義、執行條件與類型

Definition and Classification. When the Prophet sent Muadh to Yemen, he asked him about the sources on which he would base his judgments and approved of his intention of “putting all his energy into formulating his own judgment” in cases where he could find no guidance in the Qur’an and the Sunna. This personal effort undertaken by the jurist in order to understand the source and deduce the rules or, in the absence of a clear textual guidance, formulate independent judgments is what is called ijtihad in the field of Islamic law and jurisprudence. Hashim Kamali proposes the following definition: “Ijtihad is defined as the total expenditure of effort made by a jurist in order to infer, with a degree of probability, the rules of Sharia from their detailed evidence in the sources. Some ulama have defined ijtihad as the application by a jurist of all his faculties either in inferring the rules of Sharia from their sources or in implementing such rules and applying them to particular issues. Ijtihad essentially consists of an inference [istinbat] that amounts to a probability [zann], thereby excluding the extraction of a ruling from a clear text.” (Ijtihad的條件: 在沒有經文明文規定情況下執行)

Like al-maslaha, the legal instrument of ijtihad has been used to justify all kinds of new judgments. So Hashim Kamali quite rightly recalls the general principle (about which the ulama are unanimous), according to which there can be no ijtihad when an explicit text exists in the sources (la ijtihada maa al-nass). This means that if there is an explicit Qur’anic verse whose meaning is obvious and leaves no room for any hypothesis or interpretation (qati al-dalala), no ijtihad is possible. Similarly, if the jurist finds an authenticated hadith (mutawatir, qati al-thubut) whose content is also completely explicit and unambiguous (qati al-dalala), he must use that as his reference and there is no room for the exercise of ijtihad.

Thank you Obama for your mosque speech

對歐巴馬參觀清真寺的評價。

It only took him seven years. But maybe it was worth the wait. 

On Wednesday afternoon, the president of the United States mounted a podium inside a Maryland mosque to give a much-trailed speech challenging the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry in his country. (Although, as the author and lawyer Qasim Rashidjoked on Twitter, "I heard @POTUS wants to make his landmark address at a mosque a truly authentic American Muslim experience, so he's arriving an hour late.")

Born to a Muslim father from Kenya, raised from the age of six to 10 by a Muslim stepfather in Indonesia, Barack Hussein Obama has been dogged by crazy, conspiratorial claims that he is a "secret Muslim" ever since he first declared his candidacy for president.

Banal Islamophobia

A recent poll found that 29 percent of Americans and 43 percent of Republicans still believe Obama is a Muslim and, as Salon noted: "The number of Republicans who think Obama is a Muslim has actually increased since 2010." For the record, the president is a Christian who had both of his daughters baptised.

It cannot be stated often enough that the astonishing prejudice, not to mention sheer ignorance, displayed by Republican voters in states such as Iowa - where only 49 percent of them believe Islam should be legal - is the product of a well-funded and coordinated campaign to demonise Islam and Muslims in the US.