News & Public Affairs

USF students and faculty fast to raise funds for charity listen

11/11/10 Andrea Lypka
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Tags: Muslim Students Association, Project Downtown, USF, Fast-A-Thon, Islam, hunger, food, Pakistan, Red Crescent

Go hungry for a day so another won't have to- this was the pledge some USF students and faculty took when they participated to the Fast- A-Thon organized by the Muslim Students Association at USF on November 10. This year, the event raised more than $5,000 for charity. The funds were donated to a local food pantry, a free health care clinic and for flood victims in Pakistan.

No food, no water for 12 hours for a good cause - this was the pledge that student Avan ...

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Despite Koran burning cancellation, peaceful protests ensue in Gainesville listen

09/13/10 Kate Bradshaw
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Tags: Gainesville, muslims, Islam, Koran burnings, religious tolerance

Pastor Terry Jones did not burn any copies of the Muslim holy book in Gainesville Saturday, but that didn’t stop scores of peaceful demonstrators from coming to town. Amid an amped-up police presence, a reported 300 people carried signs and chanted messages of peace and tolerance across the street from Jones’s church.

University of Florida student Lila Jonas is with the sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi. She came out with her sorority sisters to stand in solidarity with Muslims.

She said the k...

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St Pete for Peace will hold protest vigil against Quran burning in Gainesville listen

09/07/10 Seán Kinane
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Tags: St. Pete for Peace, Quran, Islam

This Saturday is the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. This year the anniversary coincides with an increase in anti-Muslim sentiment across the country. That includes opposition the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan, to crimes against a Muslim congregation in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and even a planned Quran burning in Florida.

On Saturday, a church in Gainesville called the Dove World Outreach Center plans...

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At WMNF Peace Awards, Goodman critical of NYC Islamic Center controversy listen

08/30/10 Seán Kinane
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Tags: peace, Islam, Park51, Amy Goodman, WMNF

Amy Goodman was keynote speaker at WMNF’s 2nd annual Peace Awards on Saturday. During her half-hour address she spoke about her arrest at the 2008 Republican National Convention, the death of her mother and the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan. Goodman criticized opposition to what some media outlets, like MSNBC, still incorrectly call the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

We’ll make Goodman’s entire speech available as a thank-you gift during our fall f...

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Norman Finkelstein on Israel-Palestine conflict listen

04/30/10 Doris Norrito
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Tags: Israel, islam, Jews, GazaPalestinian Territories, Palestine

A lecture by Norman Finkelstein concluded a week long program on “Demystifying the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”. Finkelstein gave a recent history of the invasion of Gaza. He said the reaction to the democratic elections held in Gaza in 2006 is the “ghost that won’t be buried.”

Finkelstein quoted Mary Robinson, the former high commissioner for human rights who went to Gaza after the invasion.

Finkelstein considers Sarah Roy the world’s leading authority on the Gaza economy. Roy has de...

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A look inside Islam listen

01/19/10 Joshua Lee Holton
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Tags: islam, islamic radicalism, Religion, Polls, film, CAIR, USF

A new civil rights group for Muslims sponsored a showing of the new film “Inside Islam: What a billion Muslims really think.” The film was at USF in Tampa last Saturday night, and was designed to challenge the notion that Islam and the West are on a collision course.

Muslims in 40 countries participated in a Gallup public opinion poll that showed what Muslims think about the most controversial issues surrounding their religion. Last Saturday hundreds of people attended the film at USF, wh...

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ACLU sues Alachua Schools over anti-Islam suspensions listen

11/23/09 Seán Kinane
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Tags: ACLU, islam, christianity, free speech

Today the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a federal lawsuit against the Alachua County School District.

The lawsuit charges school administrators with unlawfully censoring students’ free speech when students were suspended or threatened with suspension for wearing t-shirts promoting their religious beliefs in school and at school events earlier this year.

WMNF spoke with Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.

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Columbus CAIR on teen runaway Fathima Rifqa Bary in Orlando listen

09/04/09 Seán Kinane
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Tags: islam, evangelical christianity

Yesterday, a judge in Orlando issued a gag order to attorneys in the case of an Ohio teen who ran away to Orlando. Seventeen-year-old Fathima Rifqa Bary converted from Islam to an evangelical branch of Christianity and claimed that she feared her Muslim parents would kill her. But in court yesterday, before the gag order, an attorney for her mother said that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation was “very favorable” and had “no evidence whatsoever” that there was abuse or thre...

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Juan Cole on U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil listen

04/06/09 Mitch E. Perry
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Tags: Foreign policy, Islam, oil

The first chapter of Juan Cole’s new Book, Engaging the Muslim World is called “The Struggle for Islamic Oil.” In it, he writes about U.S. foreign policy and oil.

He quotes John McCone, who said in the early 1970s that the relationship of the North Atlantic States to Islamic oil reached a momentous turning point when Arab oil exporters boycotted the U.S. and Netherlands in June 1967.

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Juan Cole on Wahhabism listen

04/02/09 Mitch E. Perry
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Tags: Islam, Muslims

In University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s new book, Engaging the Muslim World, he writes about Wahhabism, the distinctive form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. He writes that it has generated a great deal of concern among outsiders.

Many western observers, in explaining everything with reference to a single religious tradition, ultimately reduce Saudi Arabia to a caricature, he says. In our interview conducted with him last week, WMNF asked Cole about Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia.

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