Around Sept. 11, 2001, not long after she founded the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, Soumaya Khalifa heard from a group whose name sounded like “Bakers Club.” It wanted a presentation.

The address was unfamiliar, but she went anyway. The group turned out to be the Bickerers Club, whose members love to argue. Islam was their topic du jour and theirvenue was a tavern. Ms. Khalifa laughed, and made the best of it.

Ms. Khalifa, who was born in Egypt and raised in Texas, wears a head scarf but also juggles, comfortably, the demands of American suburbia: crowded schedule, minivan and all.

She is one of a type now found in most sizable U.S. cities: vocal Muslim women wary of the predominantly male leadership of their community and increasingly weary of suspicions of non-Muslims about Islam.

These women have achieved a level of success and visibility unmatched elsewhere. They say they are molded by the freedoms of the United States — indeed, many unabashedly sing its praises — and by the intellectual ferment stirred when American-born and immigrant Muslims mix.

“What we’re seeing now in America is what has been sort of a quiet or informal empowerment of women,” said Shireen Zaman, executive director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a nonprofit research institute founded after the 2001 attacks to provide research on American Muslims. “In many of our home countries, socially or politically it would’ve been harder for Muslim women to take a leadership role. It’s actually quite empowering to be Muslim in America.”

As Najah Bazzy, a American-born nurse and founder of several charities in Michigan, put it: “Yeah I’m Arab, yeah I’m very American, and yeah I’m very Islamic, but you put those things in the blender and I’m no longer just a thing. I’m a new thing.”

It is not always easy. Several of the Muslim women interviewed for this article said they had been the object of abusive letters, e-mails or blog posts.

Yet in their quest to break stereotypes, America’s Muslim women have advantages. They are better educated than counterparts in Western Europe, and also than the average American, according to a Gallup survey in March 2009. In contrast to their sisters in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they are just as likely as their menfolk to attend religious services, which equates to greater influence. And Gallup found that Muslim American women, often entrepreneurial, come closer than women of any other faith to earning what their menfolk do.

“Muslims coming to North America are often seeking an egalitarian version of Islam,” said Ebrahim Moosa, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Duke University. “That forces women onto the agenda and makes them much more visible than, say, in Western Europe.”

Besides her speakers’ bureau, which advertises itself as “a bridge between Islam and Americans of other faiths,” Ms. Khalifa heads a consultancy working with students, executives, soldiers and even the F.B.I. to overcome stereotypes. Some people she addresses have never met a Muslim. Some look askance at head scarves.

Ms. Khalifa, who has degrees in chemistry and human resources, began wearing a head scarf in her mid-30s, about 15 years ago. At first, she said, people looked at her “like I was different, Muslim, un-American, stupid.”

But she is quietly persistent. When a small-town newspaper refused to run Ms. Khalifa’s ad listing the hours of a nearby mosque, she organized a successful boycott by local churchmen.

Perhaps the most noticed figure among American Muslim women is Ingrid Mattson. In a bright-red jumper and multicolored head scarf, she stood out among the gray-haired clerics in black who gathered in Washington in September to try and defuse the anger over the planned mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York.

Ms. Mattson, who is 47 and teaches at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, became the first woman to head the Islamic Society of North America, one of the largest Muslim associations on the continent.

She was first elected vice president on Sept. 4, 2001, then president in 2006, a position she held until September; those years were so full of sound and fury over all things Muslim that gender took a back seat.

Source : New York Times

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Fingers were not lickin’ good for KFC in their bid to sell fried chicken to Islamic customers in Britain. It hoped to woo the Islamic market by opening over 100 outlets selling halal-only meat, slaughtered under strict religious guidelines.

However, Dr Nassem Chairman of Birmingham central Mosque said that the method used for slaughtering by machine was not Halal. The slaughtering must be performed by a muslim while reciting the tasmiyyah on each and every animal, which is an important part of the slaughter for halal, as per the guidance for halal as set by the Food standard Agency. And the fact the tasmiyyah is being played over a speaker means each bird it not blessed individually as it is killed by a machine.

KFC insisted their methods met the approval of the Halal Food Authority, ( Private business).

A survey carried out by Islamic Scholars here in the UK said that machine slaughter was deemed not to be Halal. This view was also endorsed by the Lancashire Council of Mosques at their meeting with KFC, and also the Birmingham Council of Mosques who have also gone on record that machine slaughter is Haraam.

Asking a private business to certify the product does not make it Halal.
Dr Yunes Teinaz, advisor to the Islamic Cultural Centre and the London Central Mosque Trust, said: “What is required is a government-supervised body for the sale and production of halal meat, with the issue of the guidance for halal to the local authority enforcement officers who are now requested to use this advice when planning inspections, food sampling and labelling checks relating to Halal foods.

They should then take appropriate enforcement action where necessary to protect the interests of the Muslim Community. The mislabelling and misrepresentation of Halal foods is of great importance to the Muslim Community, and continues to be an issue of concern.

We have now warned the UK’s 2.4 million Muslims not to eat KFC meat, Imam Yusuf Shabbir of the Lancashire Council of Mosques said: “With KFC confirming to us that it has no intention of changing the mechanical method of slaughter we will advise members of the Muslim community of this.” Any companies claiming to do machine slaughter will also be deemed to be not Halal.

How can KFC claim some of their restaurants are halal and the majority of them are not, when the same slaughtering process has been adopted which is identical for both types of restaurant? It’s either halal or not, it can’t be both, that’s why its important to label every thing 100% Halal.

Though the Daily Mail recently highlighted the situation that all KFC restaurants are using halal chicken, but the UK public don’t know, they have done nothing to change their policy.

Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham said in his interview in front of the Houses of Lords that Machine slaughter / Blessed Blade is not a method for Halal slaughtering. He also stated that companies that are issuing Halal certificates to organizations using machine slaughter / Blessed Blade are committing a crime and should be reported to the government/ Local Authorities.

A trail of smoke is seen after the launch of a rocket from the northern Gaza Strip aimed towards Israel on December 27, 2008. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner)

Imam Hashim Raza leads mourners in prayer during a funeral for Mohsin Naqvi at al-Fatima Islamic Center in Colonie, N.Y., Monday, Sept. 22, 2008. Naqvi was a Muslim, a native of Pakistan (he emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 8 years old and became a citizen at 16) and a U.S. Army officer. He was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

A man tries to cross a makeshift bridge to escape his flooded home in Nowshera, Pakistan on July 31, 2010. (REUTERS/Adrees Latif)

Pakistani Christians pray for civilians from the troubled Swat Valley in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)