And yet another… I’m reminded of American talk radio and significant swaths of the Blogosphere today. Is the word "Islamofascist" employed today with much less venom  (or carelessness) than "cockroach" was in the example below? It’s enough to make this liberal buy a nice big shotgun, just in case. MEDIA: When Hate Speech Turns Deadly, Who Can Stop It? While tensions already existed due to high population density and the poisonous historical influence of Rwanda’s former coloniser, Belgium, the Hutus... Read more

And another… Some beautiful and vivid anecdotes from the life of the 9th century Sufi sheikh, Hazrat Sahl ibn Abd Allah al-Tustari. Living Islam -Tustari He narrates from `Umar ibn Wasil al-Basri that Sahl said: "My uncle once told me: `Remember Allah Who created you.’ I said: `How should I remember him?’ He replied: `Say in your heart, whenever you are alone at night, three times, without moving your tongue: Allah is with me; Allah is looking at me; Allah... Read more

A draft that had been gathering dust… One of the texts assigned to students in the introduction to Western religion course I TAed this spring is an excerpt from Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.  My first reaction as someone committed to reform (and not the "reforms" of old-style revivalist movements) upon seeing this in the syllabus in January was frustration, as I worried that his inclusion would confuse students about the nature of contemporary Islamic thought and ultimately only close their minds... Read more

Well, folks, I’ve never really had the time to blog in the first place and I  happen to be a slow writer who tends to savagely rip up, spit upon, and then rewrite his output over and over like some unholy cross between Sisyphus and Penelope. Which means that I often find blogging aesthetically frustrating, as I hate leaving a post in an unpolished a state but rarely have time to revise it adequately. That problem is exponentially worsened by... Read more

Ever since I escaped the vain tumult of DC life, I’ve told people that its cost of living and paradoxically sterile civic and communal life achieved the psychological equivalent of the miracle of transforming lead into gold: a hopeless Yankee, big-city sophisticate who for the longest time considered any area too small to support a proper "alternative" newspaper an irremediably uncivilized backwater has been born anew as a country boy whose hearts sinks at the thought of heading into town.... Read more

A new report commissioned by the Indian government lays bare the discrimination and poverty suffered by India’s Muslim minority. Some highlights from the article (emphasis added): India, which has long prided itself as a shining example of democracy and religious-cultural pluralism, is being forced to contend with an unpleasant truth: the foundations of its claim to religious integration and harmony may be far shakier than earlier believed. This is a greatly underreported problem that I’ve mentioned here before. “The truth... Read more

The articulate and influential conservative Roman Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus has a very interesting and thoughtful discussion in First Things, the journal that he edits, of the debate over Muslims in Europe entitled "The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe".  Neuhaus has made controversial statements about Islam and Muslims in the past and jousted a bit with Muslim organizations (especially CAIR). Which is why his evenhanded analysis of Philip Jenkins’ critique of the conventional wisdom in the "War on Terror"... Read more