There is a widespread perception that music is generally forbidden in Islam. The Qur'an, the first source of legal authority for Muslims, contains no direct references to music. However, most religious scholars refer to Bukhari's hadith (Book 7, Volume 69, Hadith 494) that recounts the Prophet as saying, "From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks and the use of musical

The photograph that accompanies this blog is a close-up of a Muhammad sculpture taken by Franz Jantzen of the North Wall Frieze in the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. To my knowledge, this is the only image of Muhammad on public display in the United States. To most Muslims, this is a form of Idolatry. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with a comment from Abu Laith al Saudi, the nom de guerre of the Islamic State military commander back in 2015 in

Last week in a federal courtroom in Alexandria Virginia, a British national admitted he was a key part of the Islamic State’s actions to torture and behead four American hostages between 2012 and 2015. In March of this year, a father in India beheads his daughter in a case of honor killing. Daniel Pearl, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal was beheaded in Pakistan in 2002. In Indonesia, Islamic State sympathizers have called for the beheading of a man who cl

Before Muhammad became a Prophet at 40 years old, he was a businessman – a trader who worked caravans. The Prophet Muhammad was a successful businessman, as were several of his companions and successors. One of Muhammad’s companions, Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph, is said to have claimed: “Death can come upon me nowhere more pleasantly than where I am engaged in business in the market, buying and selling on behalf of my family.” Trading was in the blood and the DNA o