After a Tennessee news report touts anti-Muslim propaganda, a mosque is vandalized.
A letter to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg from a scholar of religious extremism.
Muslim Students Shocked By Professor’s Column
An NYU professor suggests in Forbes that we refer to tragedies like the one at Ft. Hood as “Going Muslim.” An NYU alumnus, himself a Muslim, finds himself shocked, not so much by the article, as by the response of the school administration.
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.
Claim that alleged shooter took orders from the Muslim Brotherhood straight out of the Islamophobia playbook.
That doesn’t stop rumor, innuendo, and profiling.
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.
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.
Rarefied Islamophobia: When Americans Duplicate the European Cultural Talk
By presenting itself as a disinterested collection of “facts” and “data,” an alarmist new book about the Muslim threat to Europe has been taken more seriously than your standard Islamophobic pamphlet.
The hijab has gone from symbol to object, and the people associated with it are that object. Alex W. attacked and killed a piece of cloth.
Muslims Are Not the Only Group Endangered By Hate
The recent murder in Germany, and the ensuing silence, reveal a shocking level of tolerance for Islamophobia. But hate is seldom focused nor easily sated.
Muslims Murder, Christians Don’t: What Went Missing in Analysis of Tiller’s Executioner
While much of the media had no trouble detailing the religious commitment of the Muslim killer of an army recruiter, most profiles painted Scott Roeder as a right-wing, anti-government, anti-abortionist, with a prior arrest history and mental problems. His connection with extremist Christian groups, apparently, is irrelevant.
A new form of bias against Muslims is taking shape, one that masks as “objective” and based on observation.
Quite a bit, as it turns out. Whether as public figures or educators, academics can, for example, help refute the work of high profile Islamophobes whose expertise lies outside of Islam.
Osama and Orientalism: Where Islamophobes Meet Al-Qaeda
What do critics of Islam have in common with bin Laden? They both have a reductive, prescriptive understanding of religion and they use it to assert superiority over others.
Op-Ed: The Real Muslims?
We all know by now that there are some who would like to claim the term “Christian” for their own particular brand of belief. Is there an analogy to this in the contemporary North American Muslim community?
The Portuguese Cardinal's warning manages to be a cocktail of Islamophobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia...
The Most Popular Stories of 2008
The numbers are in and you, the reader, have chosen your favorite RD stories of the year; from Rick Warren to AIPAC, Sarah Palin, Creationism 2.0 and the fabled “death” of the religious right.
Michael Jackson, Muslim
What is the significance of the fact that Michael Jackson has joined the faith of bin Laden and the Ayatollah Khomeini?
Israel Under Bush: The Islamophobia Years
The Republican strategy of scapegoating Muslims may have been calculated to lure Jewish voters, a failed strategy that turns out to be the tail-end of a long and damaging trend.
Reflections of an American Muslim sometimes Democrat...
Election Day: Hope, Heartbreak, Naiveté, and Studs Terkel
We may not have had a big map, or red and blue markers, or a flashing digital electoral vote count, but some of our favorite writers agreed to share a few words on this big day.
Having a nuanced view of Islam is the new sex scandal for politicians...