Posts Categorized: News

Third Annual Halal Food Festival Draws Large Crowd

More than 4,000 people attended Saturday’s third annual Halal Food Festival at Rowland Park in South Brunswick.
Organized by the Muslim Youth Community Center, the festival’s halal food – prepared according to Islamic guidelines and permissible for Muslims to eat – included cuisine from the Middle East, China, South Asia, Afghanistan and America. Non-food vendors at […]

A League of Their Own

Fifteen seasons. 835 players. Three divisions. And 1,000 text messages. A basketball league commissioner once said, “I think the worst decision I’ve made is giving my phone number out to people.” That commissioner’s name is Edriss Froogh, and that league is Muslim Basketball.
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New Jersey’s Muslim Basketball league builds brotherhood

While certainly not the first or the last venture of its kind, the Muslim Basketball league in northern New Jersey (muslimbasketball.org) just might be the best in the U.S. at what they do.
What began nine years ago as a loosely-organized series of pickup games in Flanders, N.J., has grown into a thriving rec league with […]

Muslim Basketball: Taking over the court

The most popular jerseys on the basketball court in Parsippany, New Jersey on Saturday mornings do not read “New York,” “Brooklyn,” or “Bulls.” Instead, the black or white jerseys with big bold red letters display the logo of “Muslim Basketball.”
Worn by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the reversible jerseys are the uniforms for players in a […]

US Muslims Find ‘Love and Camaraderie’ on Court

There are basketball players here – lots of them. For them, playing hoops is fun, but it’s also a way to build brotherhood; a way to grow closer with others who share their Muslim faith, and get to know some who don’t.
They are high-school students, representatives of the Washington, D.C., region of the Muslim Inter-Scholastic […]

New Jersey Islamic students see basketball league taking shape

Ibrahim Omar was up before sunrise on a recent Sunday, preparing for “wudu,” his first Islamic prayer of the day. He carefully washed his hands, mouth, nose, face, arms, head, ears and feet. Then he walked into his bedroom and faced to the direction of the “qiblah” in the holy city of Mecca.
Not long after […]

Why basketball is Muslims’ favorite sport

Omar Abdelkader, a student at Northeastern University in Boston, is an observant Muslim but admits that, at least as a kid, he was occasionally seduced by the swish of a perfect jump-shot over the Islamic call to prayer.
“Sometimes we’d sneak out of prayers to play ball,” recalled Abdelkader, who grew-up attending the Worcester Islamic Center […]