The Times columnist’s latest betrays a terrifying ignorance of Islam.
Israel Claims Holy Sites, Reignites Religious Flashpoint
Netanyahu’s decision to declare two holy sites located in the Palestinian Territories and once shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims “national heritage sites” triggers violence and conflict.
Kill Your Patriarchs: An Interview with Michael Muhammad Knight
His first book, The Taqwacores, was xeroxed and spiral-bound, but it struck a loud punk-inflected chord in a community of mostly-Islamic youth, trying to reconcile music and religion.
Taqwacore Roundtable: On Punks, the Media, and the Meaning of “Muslim”
What do you get when you add taqwa, or God-consciousness, to the punk suffix “-core”? Can something be Islamic without being religious? As journalists try to get a handle on this genre- and culture-bending mashup, RD associate editor Hussein Rashid gets right to the source.
Yearning For A God We Can Live With
Two new books, one offering a vision of interfaith, universal religion, the other a model of a radically transformed Judaism, attempt to wrestle God into the everyday. Against the ascendancy of the so-called New Atheism, both writers argue for a God who transcends “god-management systems” and whose primary claim on us is through our own spiritual longing.
Jesus, Son of Allah: The Roots of the Riots in Malaysia
Rioting continues in Malaysia this week as Muslims fight for the exclusive right to the word “Allah.” But is the name of God a name or a noun? And who stands to gain politically from this unrest?
The Undergarments of Absolutism: Why Abdulmutallab Got on the Plane
The so-called Christmas Bomber, a young Nigerian Muslim with a British education, was caught between wealthy westernized life and an inflexible religious ideal. His story summons a theory about how the radical narrative emerges, rises and dies
What Does the Muslim World Really Want?
Depends which of the 1.6 billion Muslims you ask. A new film seeks to give depth to Western perceptions of Islam. Too bad they didn't make it to Asia.
A letter to the editor and a response.
Two current cases involving religious (in this case Islamic) symbolism show the perilous relationship between religion and politics in civil society.
The Next Islamists: The Wide Green Smudge That’s Changing Our World
If China becomes a new priority, an economic beacon and a political patron, what happens to the question of reconciling Islam and the West? Two new books offer groundbreaking approaches to this and other unexpected questions.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: Meeting the Myth
The latest generation of religion scholars has studied Lévi-Strauss only to distance itself from his theories, and to challenge the myth of structuralism. Perhaps in doing so we have created a fable of our own.
Tariq Ramadan in Montreal: Defining Ethics in Terms of Religion
Controversial Muslim Scholar Tariq Ramadan, banned from travel to the United States, spoke in Montreal last week at the annual convention of the American Academy of Religion. In a question-and-answer session he answered accusations of “doublespeak.”
House Health Care Bill Discriminates Against Religious Freedom
Abortion is not a liberal, secular invention; there are examples in Jewish, Muslim, and even Christian theologies—and in Buddhist and Hindu traditions—of instances in which abortion is justified.
Spinning Ft. Hood
RD associate editor Hussein Rashid scrutinizes a cross-section of reactions to the Ft. Hood massacre, from those eager to blame Islam to a number of Muslim-Americans.
The picture of Major Nidal Hasan grows murkier—but it is a mistake to assume that we understand the role of his faith in the massacre at Fort Hood.
Those who denigrate the service of Muslims in the US military only compound the tragedy.
Bruce Lawrence’s unflattering review of Ariel Glucklich’s new book on suicide bombers elicited a spirited response from the author.
Claim that alleged shooter took orders from the Muslim Brotherhood straight out of the Islamophobia playbook.
That doesn’t stop rumor, innuendo, and profiling.
Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God
Of all the monotheisms, Christianity has come to depend the most on the idea of belief, or doctrine. But there is a strong countertradition, now submerged, that insists that any time we say we know who God is, or what God wants, we are committing an act of heresy.
Suicide Bombers and the Prozac God: A Review of Dying for Heaven
A new work advancing a radical theory of the motivation behind suicide bombers is almost bizarrely off the mark. Stitching together thought and observation from disparate and often dissonant sources, Georgetown theology professor Ariel Glucklich’s book would be laughable were he not a consultant to the defense community.
The Silence of Religious Voices in the Health Care Debates
The national conversation about health care has been about everything but care, or compassion, for those truly in need. Isn’t it simply wrong for religious leaders to sit this one out?
Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?
While the rioting over the Danish cartoons seems to be well behind us, Yale University Press recently removed the images from a new scholarly work on the topic. Do Muslim extremists need a scholarly book as pretext with two wars being fought in Muslim nations and an ongoing crisis in Gaza? The problem isn’t with these images, but with the ubiquitous Islamophobia in the United States.
Revisiting Hagar, The Woman Who Named God
An interview with the author of a new book that takes a critical look at the biblical tale of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and sons, claiming that this story at the core of anxiety between religions isn’t exactly as it seems.