Saba Ahmed | |
---|---|
Born | January 11, 1985 Rawalpindi, Pakistan |
Nationality | Pakistani American |
Citizenship | Pakistan United States |
Education | Portland State University (BS) University of Portland (JD) |
Occupation | President of the Republican Muslim Coalition |
Political party | Republican |
Movement | Conservatism |
Saba Ahmed (born January 11, 1985) [1] is a Pakistani-American political activist, lawyer, and engineer. She is the founder [2] and president of the Republican Muslim Coalition, [3] [4] former lawyer at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, [5] and former engineer at Intel. [6] She has urged Muslim Americans to vote Republican. [7] She supports Donald Trump, [3] but has said she is "deeply hurt by [his] ignorant views of Islam." [7]
She was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, moved to America when she was 12, and then grew up in Oregon. [8]
She came to public attention as a friend of the family of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, convicted for his attempt to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Oregon. Ahmed was interviewed by the press. [6] She posited that he may have been "framed." [9] [10]
In January 2011, she was in the local news because her family said she was missing, but she was actually safe in California. [11] At that time her family claimed she was diagnosed with a mental disorder, but Ahmed has denied that. [6] In 2011, she ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat. [5] [6]
In 2014, she published an essay in The Guardian , explaining that she had become a Republican in 2014 because she believes her Islamic pro-life, pro-traditional family, pro-business, pro-trade values are aligned with GOP. [4] [5] [7] In June 2014, at a panel hosted by The Heritage Foundation on the Benghazi attacks, activist Brigitte Gabriel taunted her after asking about their portrayal of all Muslims as bad. [8] [12] In 2015, she made headlines for wearing an American flag hijab on Fox News. She was discussing Trump's comment that he would consider shutting down certain radical mosques after a series of terrorist attacks in Paris. She invited Trump to go to a mosque. [5] [13] [14] [2] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
Oregon 1st Congressional District Special Democratic Primary Election, 2011 | |||
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Party | Candidate | Votes | % |
Democratic | Suzanne Bonamici | 49,721 | 65.18 |
Democratic | Brad Avakian | 16,963 | 22.24 |
Democratic | Brad Witt | 6,003 | 7.87 |
Democratic | Dan Strite | 1,212 | 1.59 |
Democratic | Dominic Hammon | 923 | 1.21 |
Democratic | Todd Lee Ritter | 651 | 0.85 |
Democratic | Write-ins | 469 | 0.61 |
Democratic | Saba Ahmed | 250 | 0.33 |
Democratic | Robert Lettin | 91 | 0.12 |
In modern usage, hijab generally refers to various head coverings conventionally worn by many Muslim women. While a hijab can come in many forms, it often specifically refers to a headscarf, wrapped around the head, covering the hair, neck and ears, but leaving the face visible. The use of the hijab has been on the rise worldwide since the 1970s and is viewed by many Muslims as expressing modesty and faith. There is a consensus among Islamic religious scholars that covering the head is either required or preferred, though some Muslim scholars and activists argue that it is not mandated. According to the Harvard University Pluralism Project: "Some Muslim women cover their head only during prayer in the mosque; other Muslim women wear the hijab; still others may cover their head with a turban or a loosely draped scarf."
Islam is the third largest religion in the United States (1%), behind Christianity and Judaism, equaling Buddhism and Hinduism percentage wise. A 2017 study estimated that 3.45 million Muslim Americans live in the United States, about 1.1 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2017, 20 states which were mostly in the South and Midwest reported Islam being the largest non-Christian religion. In 2020, the U.S. Religion Census found there to be 4.45 million Muslim Americans in the country, making up 1.3% of the population.
Islamic clothing is clothing that is interpreted as being in accordance with the teachings of Islam. Muslims wear a wide variety of clothing, which is influenced not only by religious considerations, but also by practical, cultural, social, and political factors. In modern times, some Muslims have adopted clothing based on Western traditions, while others wear modern forms of traditional Muslim dress, which over the centuries has typically included long, flowing garments. Besides its practical advantages in the climate of the Middle East, loose-fitting clothing is also generally regarded as conforming to Islamic teachings, which stipulate that body areas which are sexual in nature must be hidden from public view. Traditional dress for Muslim men has typically covered at least the head and the area between the waist and the knees, while women's islamic dress is to conceal the hair and the body from the ankles to the neck. Some Muslim women also cover their face. However, other Muslims believe that the Quran does not mandate that women need to wear a hijab or a burqa.
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is a US far-right, anti-Muslim, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The founder and former president of the organization was Frank J. Gaffney Jr.. The current president is Tommy Waller, a former US Marine. CSP sometimes operates under its DBA name Secure Freedom. The organization also operates a public counter-jihad campaign and the website counterjihad.com.
Sunni Islam is, by far, the most widely practiced religion in Tajikistan. Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school is the recognized religious tradition of Tajikistan since 2009. According to a 2009 U.S. State Department release, the population of Tajikistan is 98% Muslim,, with some Sufi orders.
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular, Western, or otherwise non-Muslim feminist discourses, and have recognized the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Asra Quratulain Nomani is an Indian American author. Born in India to Muslim parents, she earned a BA from West Virginia University in liberal arts in 1986 and an MA from the American University in international communications in 1990. She subsequently worked as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal with her colleague Daniel Pearl in Pakistan post-9/11. Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists while following an investigative lead. Nomani later became the co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student investigative-reporting project which has looked into Pearl's murder.
Islam in Denmark, being the country's largest minority religion, plays a role in shaping its social and religious landscape. According to a 2020 analysis by Danish researcher Brian Arly Jacobsen, an estimated 256,000 people in Denmark — 4.4% of the population — were Muslim in January, 2020. The figure has been increasing for the last several decades due to multiple immigration waves involving economic migrants and asylum seekers. In 1980, an estimated 30,000 Muslims lived in Denmark, amounting to 0.6% of the population.
Islam is the second largest religion in Norway after Christianity. As of 2023, the number of Muslims living in Norway was 182,607. The majority of Muslims in Norway are Sunni, with a significant Shia minority. 55 percent of Muslims in the country live in Oslo and Viken. The vast majority of Muslims have an immigrant background, and very few Norwegians are Muslim.
Various styles of head coverings, most notably the khimar, hijab, chador, niqab, paranja, yashmak, tudong, shayla, safseri, carşaf, haik, dupatta, boshiya and burqa, are worn by Muslim women around the world, where the practice varies from mandatory to optional or restricted in different majority Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a U.S.-based anti-Muslim advocacy group that opposes what it calls "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans.
Ibtihaj Muhammad is an American sabre fencer and member of the United States fencing team. She is known for being the first Muslim American woman to wear a headscarf while competing for the United States in the Olympics, as well as for winning an Olympic medal (bronze) wearing it.
American Muslims often face Islamophobia and racialization due to stereotypes and generalizations ascribed to them. Due to this, Islamophobia is both a product of and a contributor to the United States' racial ideology, which is founded on socially constructed categories of profiled features, or how people seem.
Islamophobia in Canada refers to a set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam or Muslims in Canada.
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