The Dayton Daily News reported over the weekend that two men sprayed chemicals on about 300 Muslims, including a number of children, praying in their mosque Friday night.

Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley told the paper that someone - possibly two men seen by one of the children - had “sprayed an irritant into the mosque,” with a hand-held spray can.

The holy month of Ramadan, during which observant Muslims fast from dawn to sunset each day, concludes Thursday. Each evening during Ramadan Muslims break their 13- to 14-hour fast with prayer and a communal meal called the iftar.

The prayer session at the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton was stopped while those “suffering from tearing, coughing and shortness of breath could receive treatment,” according to the paper.

In a Sunday follow-up story, the paper said the police investigation was continuing. It also reported that “several Dayton religious groups were scheduled to view and…

In light of the fact that Islam is celebrating Ramadan…

…and also in light of the all too many mis-characterizations of Islam in the popular imagination (look no farther than Townsend’s piece on the “Obsession” DVD below)….

Here’s a brief but incisive overview of the current, and evolving, state of American Islam.

It was written on the occasion of the recent passing of Warith Deen Mohammed, son of Elijah Muhammad and one of the central figures in the shift of Black Muslims from heterodox sectarianism to orthodox global Islam.

Earlier in June, two dozen Roman Catholic and Muslim scholars met in Rome to discuss the theme “Christians and Muslims as witnesses of the God of Justice, of Peace and of Compassion in a World suffering from Violence.” Pope Benedict XVI personally visited the meeting to highlight its significance. While such interreligious dialogues seem groundbreaking these days, this meeting was actually the 14th annual meeting between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the The Islamic-Catholic liaison Committee.

Rev. Dr. Frederic Ntedika Mvumbi, OP, one of my Dominican brothers from the Congo who teaches Islam in a Catholic seminary in Nairobi, Kenya, was fortunate enough to be one of the participants, and sent a personal report. In it he said that “a common understanding of these issues was found, though with difficulty, and an appeal was made to commit ourselves to it:”

1. The inherent dignity of each human being, from which stem…

My Muslim friend: A young Catholic learns about Islam

As a father I know I can never be sure if my children are going to adopt my religious beliefs or not. I am praying that they would see the beauty in my religion, Islam, as much as I see it. But in the end they will have to find their own path. This is the way I want them to be anyway. Being part of a religion just because you were brought up within that religion does not make you a believer. Making your own informed, free-will decision to actively subscribe to a belief system is what you will be rewarded for, as least to my simple mind.

The one thing that I definitely believe that parents succeed in ‘indoctrinating’ their children in — mostly subconsciously — is the concept of coexistence, tolerance and respect for ‘the others’. The early-age teaching of,…

You could call it Hijabgate, I guess.

The Politico reported that two Muslim women wearing head-scarves were barred from sitting behind Obama at a campaign rally in Michigan on Monday. Campaign volunteers were “seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate,” according to the Politico.

The campaign later apologized, of course, but the mix-up can’t help Obama’s somewhat tarnished reputation among American Muslims who are already uneasy about the candidate’s forceful rejection of rumors that he is Muslim. As the Politico’s Ben Smith puts it, for Obama…

…the old-fashioned image-making contrasts with his promise to transcend identity politics and to embrace all elements of America. The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also highlight an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that…

I’m still chuckling about St. Joseph’s record number of comments from Kim Wallis’s recent post. I’m a cradle Catholic and didn’t know about this custom until I was somewhere in my forties! Go figure.

For your perusal I’m offering today nine of the ninety-two links sent out in today’s Morning Edition, a daily news service we provide for Catholic leaders:

1.) Bishop Joseph Nauman, originally from St. Louis and now in Kansas City, Kansas, has been making news lately. He wrote in his most recent column,

“My May 9 column, making public my request to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius not to present herself for reception of holy Communion until she had sought to repair the public scandal of her long-standing support for legalized abortion, not surprisingly has initiated quite a bit of discussion in secular newspapers, local talk radio shows and coffee-break conversations…..” Read the full column here.

2.) The UK Telegraph newspaper online tells…

Many of us probably spent Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend with friends over a BBQ lunch. That is exactly what I did yesterday, but it was especially exciting. At 10 am on Sunday I was on my way to Building 52 of the Jefferson Barracks VA hospital to meet with friends that make up the heart and muscles of MCS.

MCS stands for the ambitious name Muslim Community of St. Louis. For the second year in a row, that group held gratitude Memorial Day weekend lunch for our veterans who were spending the festive weekend away from home, and in extended care and rehabilitation facilities of the VA hospital.

MCS is the brain child of a group of St. Louis Muslims who wanted to a start community service group that reaches out to whomever may need them in St. Louis, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

During the early organizational meetings, two main objectives…

Sunday was Mother’s day. It is a day that is as popular in Muslim countries as it is in the USA and the West. In Egypt it is celebrated on the first day of spring as proposed by the first person to advocate setting up a day for that occasion in the 1950s. I believe many of the Arab countries adopted the same date. The symbolism of associating Mother’s day with the dawn of spring should be obvious.I have to admit, that the pure and emotional celebration that I witnessed in my younger years has given in to the commercial enterprise that dominates every celebration known to mankind as time passes. For a nice review of the history of the event, and how its creator reacted to the ‘business’ aspect of it, read this article ‘Mother’s Day creator likely spinning in her grave‘ (from the Vancouver Sun).

Mothers have the same…

Interesting recent story from The Journal-News in Hillsboro, Ill.

Here’s the lede:

For the purpose of Thursday night’s emergency exercise drill, the Continuing Recovery Center in Irving had become Irving Mosque, the home-base for a radical, heavily armed group with suspected terrorist ties.

According to the story, about 120 people in 30 different first-responder agencies took part in the drill, about 70 miles northeast of St. Louis. Some of those agencies included the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, the Illinois State Police Statewide Terrorism Intelligence Center, the Illinois Secretary of State Law Enforcement, the Illinois Secretary of State Bomb Squad, Madison County HazMat and Madison County Unified Command.

My favorite quote in the story (the only quote in the story) comes from Montgomery County EMA director Diana Holmes who said the exercise “went very well”:

I would like to thank everyone involved, and especially the folks in Irving who allowed us to use their community for this…

I fell in love with country music in the late 1970’s, long before I came to North America. I am still in love with the themes, the feelings and the stories in it. Unfortunately, and like everything else in our lives these days, politics got into it, and for some it has become a sloganeering venue. I still listen to country music though, and I simply switch to other stations when I get one of those sloganeering songs.

Several months ago I wrote a post for my personal blog about a song by a Muslim country music singer / songwriter. The music was beautiful, like many of his songs, but also the words were very moving. It got so popular because of the video accompanying it.

The video is based on a selection of the responses from American Muslims as a part of a project on what…