It’s Theology, Not Baseball: Misunderstanding Iraq’s Sectarian Conflicts
Nothing is as conducive to global radical mobilization as an exclusive theological summons.
Read Moreafghanistan
The Irony of the American Studies Israel Boycott
In an effort to create “solidarity” with Palestinian suffering the ASA voted to support a boycott of a nation whose injustices are underwritten by the “A” in the ASA’s name.
Read More
Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet
There are other senses in which the Muslim world, by and large, has not ‘excelled,’ and for that perhaps we should be grateful, not caustic. For you cannot claim the planet and eat it too. Nothing the Muslim world has accomplished can possibly compare to the harm done by Western technologies and modes of consumption.
Read More
Conservative Mag: Glenn Greenwald Hates America
But not for the reason you might think.
Read More
“Hem and Haw”: A Failed Syria Strategy
Where Bush offered shock and awe, Obama offers the hem and haw. War, but not a serious one; aid, but of the “non-lethal kind”; a desire to draw red lines, but a tendency to hope nobody notices them.
Read MoreNews Flash: Buddhist-Majority Countries Just as Complicated as Muslim-Majority
Worsening situation of Burma’s Muslims is instructive.
Read More
Palin on Syria: Let “Allah” Sort it Out
Was the former governor simply seeking a laugh or unwittingly invoking the Crusades?
Read More
Can Interfaith Dialogue Cure Religious Violence?
I think we should be cautious about attempts to frame the Boston bombings, or for that matter any profound act of violence, mainly as a failure of (or an injunction for) “interfaith cooperation.”
Read More
Was Islam Responsible for the Boston Bombings, or Was “Internet Islam”?
RD bloggers have rightly asked the question of the depth of the “piety” of the Tsarnaevs. That too misses a vital point. I do not for a moment discount the sincerity of the feelings for Islam by the Tsarnaev brothers. But, what Islam was the object of those feelings? I would offer that it was for an “Internet Islam”—for an abstract, compact, easily rendered Islam, fed by the representations flowing from out of the ether!
Read MoreWhat to Make of the Chechnya Connection? An Expert Weighs In
Jenik Radon, professor of international affairs: “not likely this was part of a larger plot or movement.”
Read More