Religion Dispatches
In a book geared toward the general reader, scholar Anne Norton confronts Islamophobia in the West and argues against the persistent notion that Islam and the West are locked in a cosmic battle.
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A recent article in the Washington Post recycles well-worn myths about religiosity and Islam. Is this the best we can do?
Read MoreA new report details the egregious civil rights violations and damage to communities from the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim communities post-9/11.
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I’m not arguing that Islamophobia is racist, or that Islamophobes are racists, because that’s not quite what’s happening. For one thing, Islamophobes embrace ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and racists wouldn’t (indeed couldn’t) do the same. But consider the similarities: the Islamophobe must assume Muslims suffer some sort of pre-Islamic inferiority, sufficient to explain how some (largely non-white) people—actually, a lot of people—not only fell for Islam in the first place, but then stayed down. How long do enforced ideologies last? Nazism: twelve years. Communism: some decades. Islam: Fourteen centuries and counting.
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When you don’t know anything about the object of your hatred, it has a tendency to show.
Read MoreA new document sets the record straight (though you won’t find anything on the president).
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What are we to make of Robert Spencer’s admission?
Read MoreBut RD’s Haroon Moghul offers crucial, lucid answers to questions that weren’t asked.
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Why on earth is an orthodox Jew pushing a turbaned Muslim man in a wheelchair on the cover of Charlie Hebdo, the French baby-boomers’ favorite satirical magazine? Don’t bother looking for any deep symbolism—you won’t find it.
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