Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam
An excerpt from Asma Afsaruddin’s new book, “Contemporary Issues in Islam.”
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How Do We Talk About Islam After Charlie Hebdo?
It’s all too depressingly predictable and sickeningly familiar.
Read MoreEgypt and the Problem of Religion
Which side in Egypt is currently on the side of the angels and which not? One likes to assume that in any, particularly political, conflict the good guys can be easily separated from the bad guys; ordinarily the former is assumed to play by the rules of the game…
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Inventing “Jihad”
Last week, in the wake of Russian-led investigation, it was reported that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in Russia he was, in fact, more eager to wage war than the Islamist contacts he had traveled to find. Accounts reveal that he arrived in Russia with “an avid interest in waging jihad.”
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Waging Patience, Not Violence
For several years after 9/11, it was one of my favorite pastimes to browse the bookstores in airports in particular to check out the latest screed that had been published on the topic. All of this stoked a desire in me to write a book-length monograph soberly exploring the many dimensions of jihad as evident in different genres of Arabic language primary sources and to anchor these understandings in specific historical circumstances.
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