Islamica Magazine
Encyclopedia
Islamica Magazine was a quarterly magazine in the United States with editorial offices in Amman
Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...

, Jordan, Cambridge, MA and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, UK., dedicated to presenting various perspectives and opinions on Islam and the Muslim world. It is currently on hiatus due to financial constraints.

The magazine's concept and relaunch were achieved through the efforts of Sohail Nakhooda, a Jordan-based LSE graduate who was the first Muslim to study Christian theology at the Vatican. His vision for the magazine, as is the vision of the current staff, aims to broaden perspectives on Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 and provide a forum for Muslims to articulate their concerns while establishing cross-cultural relations between Muslims and their neighbors and co-religionists. The magazine is produced in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and draws from scholars, thinkers, writers and activists from around the world..

History

The magazine was first published in 1992 in the UK, and re-launched in 2004 from Amman
Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...

, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

. It was first constituted as a journal
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 by Sohail Nakhooda, Tariq Kazi, Najma Jaweed, and others at the Islamic Society of the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 (LSE). The Islamic Society of LSE had an intellectually vibrant scene in the early 1990s and the creation of the magazine was a natural culmination of their campus work in promoting a more engaging Islamic discourse amongst university-educated Muslims. Being a campus initiative, even though sold internationally, meant that once its team graduated, the project could not be sustainable. It therefore suspended publication for three years.

However, the tragic events of September 11th, 2001
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

 led to a dire need for authentic, reliable, and reasonable Islamic voices. A new team was formed and Islamica
Islamica
Islamica is an Islamic company founded in Chicago, Illinois that sells apparel, accessories and media marketed towards Muslim youth and cultural fusion.Islamica focuses on an emerging generation of Muslims in non-Muslim environments...

 was relaunched by Sohail Nakhooda from Jordan as a full-color magazine of opinion and analysis. Since the re-launch, a new team was formed. It includes a dispersed editorial staff based mostly in various cities around the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

, with production and design taking place primarily in Amman, Jordan. From 2004 until 2006, Islamica was a privately-owned magazine incorporated in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. During this time, the owner of the magazine was Alis Jusic, a California-based business man. The magazine has since become a project of the Center for Intercivilizational Dialogue, a non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 incorporated in the United States. During this transition, M. Salahuddin Khan, a Chicago based business man and executive, was appointed publisher. Jusic remained the magazine's director. Islamica is most widely distributed in the US, where it is currently available in select Borders
Borders Group
Borders Group, Inc. was an international book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company employed approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores....

 and Barnes and Noble bookstores. It is also distributed in over 20 different countries around the world. The magazine is printed in Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. In 2008, the ownership of the magazine was transferred to Islamica International, a British Virgin Islands-based non-profit organization. Under the leadership of a new board of directors and funded by the Aal Al Bayt Institute based in Amman, the magazine produced one additional issue in May of 2009. For reasons that are unclear, the magazine website was shut down shortly after the publication of this issue.

In October 2010, the magazine website reappeared online with an archive of past issues.

Editorial Perspective

Since the re-launch, Islamica has developed a diverse Advisory Board of scholars, thinkers, and academics to help define its editorial perspective. This board includes the following individuals: Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Osman Bakar, John Esposito
John Esposito
John Louis Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University...

, Hamza Yusuf
Hamza Yusuf
Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an Islamic scholar of the Sunni tradition, and co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States. He is an American convert to Islam, and is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders,...

, Jeremy Henzell-Thomas, Anwar Ibrahim, Enes Karic, Nuh Keller
Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Nuh Ha Mim Keller is an American Muslim translator of Islamic books and a specialist in Islamic law, as well as being authorised by Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri as a sheikh in sufism in the Shadhili Order...

, Joseph Lumbard, Ingrid Mattson, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Abdal Hakim Murad,
Sulayman Nyang, S. Abdallah Schleifer
Abdallah Schleifer
Prof. S. Abdallah Schleifer is a prominent Middle East expert, former NBC Cairo Bureau chief, and a professor of TV journalism at the American University in Cairo. He has interviewed countless Middle Eastern leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri...

, Zaid Shakir
Zaid Shakir
Zaid Salim Shakir is a prominent American Islamic scholar and writer who is a co-founder, , and faculty member, of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States, where he teaches courses on Arabic, Law, History, and Islamic Spirituality...



The magazine generally takes an orthodox Sunni
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....

 Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 perspective. In its earlier years, Islamica had a more Anglo
Anglo
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to the Angles, England or the English people, as in the terms Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American, Anglo-Celtic, Anglo-African and Anglo-Indian. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British Isles descent in The Americas, Australia and...

-Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an outlook on issues, as was reflected by its primarily British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-educated editorial team. In 2004, its core editorial staff was expanded to include six editors based in the United States. It was during this time that a more subtle transition was made towards addressing issues related to Islam for a primarily US or American audience. Evidence of this shift can be found in recent articles published by Sherman Jackson
Sherman Jackson
Sherman A. Jackson is an American scholar. He is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He was formerly the Arthur F...

, David Cole, Samuel Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...

, John Esposito
John Esposito
John Louis Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University...

 and other prominent American thinkers. Additionally, regular columnists based in the US including the comedian Azhar Usman
Azhar Usman
Azhar Usman is a Indian American Muslim comedian and actor born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.He is a former lecturer, community activist and lawyer and is often referred to as the 'Ayatollah of Comedy' and 'Bin Laughin'.-Background and education:...

, the award winning poet Daniel Abdal Hayy Moore, the essayist and writer Haroon Moghul and Asma Uddin, a lawyer and research associate for Umar F. Abd-Allah were also added to the magazine. Other regular columnists include Faraz Rabbani
Faraz Rabbani
Faraz Fareed Rabbani is a scholar and researcher of Islamic law and translator of several Arabic works to the English language.-Biography:Faraz Rabbani was born in Karachi, Pakistan and raised in Toronto, Canada. He entered the University of Toronto with a full scholarship and completed his...

, Yusuf Zanella, the British academic, H A Hellyer and Jeremy Henzell Thomas. However, the editor-in-chief, Sohail Nakhooda, remains in Amman.

Contributors

Contributors to Islamica Magazine draw from a broad cross-section of academics, journalists and experts. Since its relaunch from Amman, Jordan, in 2004, Islamica has published contributions from: Samuel Huntington, Anwar Ibrahim, Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Nuh Ha Mim Keller is an American Muslim translator of Islamic books and a specialist in Islamic law, as well as being authorised by Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri as a sheikh in sufism in the Shadhili Order...

, Abdal Hakim Murad, David Cole, Brannon Wheeler, Azhar Usman, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Haroon Moghul, John Esposito, Katherine Bullock, Michael Wolfe, Mostafa Al-Badawi, Sherman Jackson, Stephen Lathion, Ali Mazrui, HRH Prince Hasan, Svend White, Robert Crane, Paul Eisen, William Dalrymple, Ali Jumuah, Michael Vincente Perez, Ed Marques, Jordan Robinson, Mohja Kahf, Jibril Hambel, Osman Bakar, Abdallah Schleifer and Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast...

 among others.

Location

The magazine has been subsumed as a project of the Center for Intercivilizational Dialogue, a not for profit organization incorporated in the United States with offices in Amman, Jordan, Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, and London, England. The periodical contains glossy pages with photography and layout, running about 128 pages.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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