- In “Female Madrasas and Islamic Agency of Afghan Girls and Women: How Religious Education is Being Used by Afghan Women and Girls under the Taliban Regime” (Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law & Practice), Haroun Rahimi (American University of Afghanistan) and Faiza Muhammad Din (Humboldt University Berlin) examine “the potential of female madrasas in Afghanistan for allowing Afghan women to assert their agency in the face of extreme restrictions imposed on them by the Taliban. The experience of female religious education and activism from South Asia and Middle East is very different from the systematic restrictions that Afghan women experience under the Taliban, but these comparative cases help the authors conceptualize of female madrasa going under the Taliban as a way for Afghan women to assert their agency. Whilst it is too early to reach a definite conclusion, the analysis presented in this article suggests that the Afghan girls and women chose to go to madrasa to resist their oppressive environment. Most female interviewees believed that women should be allowed to continue their general education and work–subject to hijab and gender segregation–offering religious reasons for this belief. This suggests an intriguing possibility for madrasa-educated Afghan women that their religious education could enable societal and familial respect and their opinions on matters of rights of women in Islam could increase in value.”
- In “Muslims were part of America’s story long before the republic began” (The Conversation), Iqbal Akhtar (Florida International University) observes that “among the five pillars of Islam is zakat, the obligation to give a fixed share – generally 2.5% – of one’s accumulated wealth to those in need. Alongside it runs ṣadaqa: voluntary charity given over and above that obligation, with no fixed rate and no appointed season, in a form as small as a kind word or as large as an endowment. Disciplined by these obligations, American Muslims have become outsized contributors to the nation’s charitable life. Though they make up roughly 1% of the population, American Muslims gave around US$4.3 billion to charity in 2020, according to researchers at Indiana University’s Muslim Philanthropy Initiative. On average, that’s about $3,200 per donor, compared to $1,900 from their non-Muslim neighbors.