Another extract from a manuscript on which I’m actively working:   Muhammad may be the last of the prophets, in Muslim belief, but he was certainly not the first. Thus, fragments of God’s truth remain scattered about the world, owing to the earlier ministries of divinely-sent messengers. Judaism and Christianity are included in this view. Because, although they are encrusted with heresies and innovations, Judaism and Christianity are essentially divine, adher­ents of the two faiths are given a... Read more

    I launched this blog very nearly six years ago, on 8 February 2012.   That year was fated to be a very fateful and extraordinarily unpleasant one for me — including not merely my being suddenly purged from the Maxwell Institute but the unexpected death of my beloved half-brother, my only sibling — and I’m very glad that it’s over.  But such things were still ahead of me when I posted this first (blissfully ignorant) blog entry:   For... Read more

    A few more lines from my manuscript on Islam for Latter-day Saints:   Yet the Qur’an does not bring any new truths. It does not claim to do so. It is merely a restoration of those truths that had been revealed from the beginning. It carries forward what was written in the books of Abraham and Moses, confirming the earlier scriptures and particularly the Torah and the gospel.[1] “Nothing is said to you,” Muhammad is told, “that has... Read more

    Arguments have raged for well over a century and a half about the implications of the theory of evolution for theistic belief, and they will, no doubt, continue to rage for the foreseeable future.  One thing that simply cannot be said, however, is that theism as such is impossible to reconcile with belief in evolution.  This is empirically demonstrable: There are and have always been ardent theists who are committed evolutionists.   The prominent French philosopher, geologist, paleontologist,... Read more

    I’ve been aware that this announcement was coming, but have held off from commenting on it until it was made public:   “Middle Eastern Texts Initiative moving to Brill”   I conceived and founded the Islamic Translation Series, which eventually became the more comprehensive Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI), in the early 1990s.   Already in graduate school, I had begun to think about the need for such a project, modeled (for classical Islamic civilization) on Harvard University’s famous Loeb Classical... Read more

    Notes from Hans Küng, The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion, translated by John Bowden (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company).   Commenting on the account in Genesis:   Light was created before all other things, even before sun, moon, and stars.  Joseph Haydn in his oratorio The Creation expressed this more vividly than any words could, better even than Michelangelo could depict it in the Sistine Chapel: with the surprising fortissimo change in... Read more

    Continuing through my forthcoming (and still evolving) manuscript on Islam for a Latter-day Saint audience:   Still, it was necessary and foreseen that a final messenger would have to be sent to bring the truth to the earth one final time before the consummation of all things. And it was fitting that, as the hanifs had begged, this final messenger was sent to a people who had never yet had the privilege of entertaining a messenger of God.... Read more

    Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture published a new article today:   “The Book of Mormon Witnesses and Their Challenge to Secularism”   ***   And here, in honor of the holiday weekend before us, is a column of mine that appeared in the Deseret News back on 29 December 2011:   We’re approaching the new year, and a new gospel doctrine curriculum year devoted to the Book of Mormon is almost upon us [that is, in 2012, not... Read more