On Monday, April 22, Gurung said he had a sit-down chat with three 12-year-old boys who were making fun of him. Among other things, the seventh graders poked fun at his appearance, calling him “Jackie Chan,” a famous Chinese actor. On Tuesday, April 23, the mocking again began in earnest while Gurung was in line for lunch. At first, he said the teasing was light-hearted, but then one student put his hand on Gurung’s shoulder and a finger in his nose. At this point, Gurung grew agitated and said remarks to the effect of, how would you like to be stereotyped i.e. called a terrorist?

According to Kaphle, Gurung had no legal representation at the time — leading his friends to fear that the court would have to rely on the complaints from Qatar Academy students in reaching a verdict.

A Developing Story: Three days after the publication of Kaphle’s Washington Post piece, Doha News reported that Dorje Gurung “has just been released from jail” and “is expected to leave Qatar soon” after his arrest resulted in an “international campaign launched by friends, colleagues, students and others organized to urge his release.” According to statement made by Selymn Price, a longtime friend of Gurung’s who had a chance to speak with him on the phone:

He was very grateful for, and overwhelmed by, the level of support he had received from his friends, family, and colleagues from around the world, and by complete strangers who had supported him on the testimony of those who do know him.

According to the article, when reached for comment the Nepalese embassy in Qatar stated that they “still had not been able to talk to Gurung.”

While later overturned, a New Jersey judge exonerated a Muslim man of raping his wife because sharia allowed him to do so. (The ruling was later overturned.)

The Muslim Students’ Association – Muslim Accommodations Task Force has convinced at least 17 universities to have foot baths built or under construction, including Boston University, George Washington University and Temple University, and at least nine universities have prayer rooms for “Muslim students only,” including Stanford, Emory and the University of Virginia, according to USA Today.

Illinois’ Skokie School Districts replaced Veteran’s Day with Eid ul Adha, a major Muslim holiday, in 2013.

In Ohio, a Muslim death row inmate, Abdul Awkal, has filed a federal lawsuit arguing the prison system’s failure to provide halal meals is a restraint on his religious freedoms. His on-going case already succeeded in having pork removed from the prison system’s menu.

Garrison writes that these instances matter “because the punishments and discrimination, especially against women, defy American principles of human rights, religious freedom, and equality of all before the law.” According to her, shari’a is incompatible with the American system of government expressed in the Declaration of Independence because that system “is based on the laws of nature and of nature’s God” — a God “who handed down a set of laws to the Israelites (Jews) and later through Jesus Christ (Christians) [who] brought about a higher law that resides in the human heart.”

You can read more about common misconceptions about Islamic law, specifically in the United States, in this interview with islawmix expert Intisar Rabb. You can also read about the misnomer of ‘creeping shari’a’ in a piece by islawmix expert Asifa Quraishi-Landes.

[I]t’s hard to believe that the university would have pursued the matter if there hadn’t been a complaint by Bishop David A. Zubik, who said that the display was “offensive to me and the church that I represent.” [After O’Connor’s university announced charges had been filed, Zubik stated]: “Once again, and as I have said over these last few weeks, this is an opportunity for all of us to be reminded that freedom of speech and freedom of expression do not constitute a freedom to dismiss or disrespect the beauty of anyone's race, the sacredness of anyone's religious belief or the uniqueness of anyone's nationality.”

In a 1989 ruling that struck down a law making it illegal to burn an American flag, the Supreme Court stated that “the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” According to Gough, conservatives say this principle is what distinguishes American society “from realms where intolerant Islam holds sway.” If that’s the case, he concludes, then he’ll be interested to see if they “express alarm” about Zubik’s statements regarding the events in Pittsburgh.

“There seems to be a lack of guidelines for what banks should do with customers,” Mohammad Farrukh Raza, managing director of U.K.-based Islamic Finance Advisory & Assurance Services, who recently visited Tripoli, said in an interview. “The general feeling is that the sector has stalled.”

Unlike its neighbors Egypt and Tunisia who have imposed similar bans, Libya “has no immediate plans to sell sukuk.” According to Central Bank Governor Saddek Elkaber, the regulator “initially wanted to promote Islamic lenders alongside so-called conventional banks,” but the General National Congress chose to ban non-Islamic banking outright in response to ‘the desires of the street and pressures’.” This “debacle” comes during a time when the country is in the midst of a democratic transition following Muammar Qaddafi’s rule in 2011: in addition to an ongoing struggle to “rein in militias and root out Islamists from the oil-producing east,” the May 5 passage of a bill “to purge Qaddafi-era officials from office” is threatening to cause even more delays.

It's basically a contract. You sit down and stipulate your conditions – for a girl who hasn't been previously married, you do need the father's permission. We stipulated the duration, my father's conditions, and I requested what you would call a dowry where the guy gives a gift to the girl. It's simple, straightforward and doesn't take long at all.

While nikah mut’ah was historically used “so that a man could have a wife for a short while when traveling long distances,” today there exists a “sharp divide” between Shia and Sunni Muslims as to whether or not temporary marriage should be considered haram, or forbidden. According to the article, mut’ah is becoming increasingly popular among Shia students on university campuses, despite warnings from outspoken Sunni Muslims like Khola Hassan, spokesperson for the UK Islamic Shari’a Council, who claim that the practice is “strictly not allowed”:

“I have never come across a Sunni scholar, throughout history, who declares mut'ah marriage to be halal,” said Mrs Hassan.”There is no difference between mut'ah marriage and prostitution. There is a time limit on the marriage, and the mahr given as a gift [from the man to the woman] is the equivalent as a payment to a prostitute.”

Because Islam “does not permit relationships like those between a boyfriend and a girlfriend,” the mut’ah is oftentimes used by young Muslims as “an opportunity to get to know each other before committing themselves to a full marriage” — prompting some critics to argue that it is simply used as an “Islamic cover” to justify pre-marital sex or the exploitation of women, “when men “take on multiple “wives” for a number of hours.” Nevertheless, parents with children engaged in temporary marriages contend that this can be avoided quite simply, by including “no physical contact” or “no funny business” in the stipulations of the contract.

In other news coming out of Britain this week, Yasmeen Nizamy at Patheos.com writes that shari’a councils in England may be putting Muslim women at risk, giving their “complaints [little] attention until something serious happens” like physical abuse. In addition to these instances being anything but congruent with the stories of shari’a and divorce as they are represented in Islamic tradition, Nizamy adds that traditional gender roles in Islam are changing as well — and that with more women both providing for the family and looking after the house it is imperative that the courts change the way they do business:

The problems [female breadwinners] face are not as attention grabbing in the media as sexual harassment, an issue that everybody rushes to cover, although solving their problem is part of solving other social problems in the society. There was a brief mention of them in the new constitution that was issued in 2012, in the only article that acknowledged women rights, article 10, which states that: ”The state provides special protections for female breadwinners, divorced women, and widows.” Well, perhaps we should put this article under the heading “Good intentions,” intentions without mechanisms to implement them on the ground.

According to Nizamy, pressuring women to stay in abusive marriages and keeping female breadwinners under the control of their husbands “are related to religious understandings interpreted by men, which do not focus on the rights of women.” Even though women have proven “good at” taking on both traditional gender roles, they are likely to see little progress until they are no longer barred “from interpreting and implementing religious doctrine.”

With Egypt as polarized as ever, the country's largest Islamist movement has effectively given up on reaching out to liberals and leftists, focusing instead on closing ranks and rallying its base. During the presidential race, Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's original candidate, chose a Salafi-leaning council of scholars for his first campaign event, where he affirmed that the application of sharia law [sic] was his ultimate goal and that he would form a committee of scholars to help parliament achieve that goal.

Following Shater’s “disqualification,” Hamid writes, Egypt opted instead to elect a “less convincing candidate” — Mohammed Morsi — who “double downed” on Shater’s promise to gradually impose shari’a in Egypt. Nevertheless, since his time in office and given the Brotherhood’s “considerable legislative and executive powers,”  Morsi and his administration “have passed almost no ‘Islamic’ legislation, with the exception of a law on Islamic bonds which angered ultra-conservative Salafis more than it did liberals.” With regards to the slow pace of this process, Hamid writes,

Islamization is not something you do on the fly. The Brotherhood's priorities, for now, are rather simple — to survive and get to the next elections. In the midst of an existential struggle, all the organization's resources have been directed toward ensuring Morsi does not fall and take the Brotherhood down with him.