One Nation

Aspiring filmmaker Rene Dongo and spoken-word artist Sofia Snow teamed up to make “The Countdown,” which won the Youth category in the One Nation, Many Voices online film contest, during their senior year of high school in 2007.

By Firas Ahmad, Reprinted with permission of Islamica Magazine
"Religion is never more meaningless than when it becomes the pawn of political or economic ambition," writes Firas Ahmad, Deputy Editor of Islamica Magazine. "This is not to say that there is no place for religion in the public square. Islamic civilization is instructive in this regard. Although religion has always played a vital and important role in society, the greatest Islamic scholars were the ones who refused to have their ethical and moral dispositions determined by the needs of power. Instead, they served as a sort of check and balance to the policies of government. Muslims need to recapture this tradition of the role of religious authority in the political affairs of society."

Farhana Khera, president and executive director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, was honored with Auburn Seminary’s “Lives of Commitment” award in New York City on April 14. Her fellow recipients were former lieutenant governor and professor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Barbara Friedman, the first woman to chair the board of governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.