“What Kind of Islam Is That?”: Talking With Refugees From ISIS
“They believe in some strange religion, not Islam,” a Muslim refugee from the Iraq city…
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Chatting with Myanmar’s Buddhist “Terrorist”
“Do I look like a terrorist?” the orange-robed monk asked me, confident that I would…
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Religion Was Not the Reason for the Paris Attacks
Can religious ideology really be blamed for the massacre at Charlie Hebdo? Responding to the New Yorker’s George Packer and others.
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Is ISIS Islamic? Is it a State?
In his September 10th address, President Obama asserted that the Islamic State is neither Islamic nor…
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How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion
Over fifty years ago Bellah rocked the field of religious studies with a pioneering study on Japanese religion. When he died suddenly this past week he was working on a book that was set to land him as a pioneer yet again.
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Don’t Blame Religion for Boston Bombings
As soon as it became clear that the older of the two suspects in the Boston bombing had become a more fervent Muslim in recent years, commentators began to point to religion as the culprit. But is it?
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Who Bombed the Boston Marathon?
No one has yet stepped out of the shadows to claim credit for the horrific bomb attacks on the Boston marathon Monday that killed three and seriously injured over a hundred. But rumors abound.
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Kindred Hatemongers: Why American Islamophobes and Muslim Protesters Need Each Other
Just as hate responds to hate, those whose political fortunes depend on the manufacture of hatred seem to need each other.
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Christian Terrorism Comes to Milwaukee
Shooter Wade Michael Page thought he was a soldier in a cosmic war.
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Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist?
If Anders Behring Breivik isn’t a Christian terrorist, then the same can be said of Osama bin Laden and many other Islamist activists—whose writings show that they were much more interested in Islamic history than theology or scripture and imagined themselves as re-creating glorious moments in Islamic history in their own imagined wars.
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