Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two
What is it about rage that pervades so much thinking about Islam? Start by picking up the latest issues of Time and Newsweek—America’s airport reading—and talking to Google.
Read Morelibya
Where are the Blessed Peacemakers?
Why don’t we hear about nonviolence from the pulpit? There is a complex theology behind the Gospel message of activist, transformative nonviolence that is easy for a homilist to set aside in favor of “God-loves-you!” Sunday messages that demand little from believers beyond robust self-esteem and a vague acceptance of God’s expectation that we generally do right by others. Thus, dusted off during Lent and the Easter season, the premodern language of sin, suffering, sacrifice, and salvation, as Marcus Borg has argued and Pew researchers have tracked, are poorly understood by Christians themselves.
Read More
Kindred Hatemongers: Why American Islamophobes and Muslim Protesters Need Each Other
Just as hate responds to hate, those whose political fortunes depend on the manufacture of hatred seem to need each other.
Read More
YouTube Terrorism
How did a B movie get rendered into Arabic, then used to justify an attack on American sites overseas?
Read MoreIs Romney’s Foreign Policy Problem a Product of his Mormonism?
An interview with Mormon Studies expert Patrick Mason.
Read MoreWho Is “Sam Bacile?”
Claimed writer and director of anti-Islam film that sparked extremist violence in Egypt and Libya.
Read MoreLooking at Libya, and at Ourselves
Violence comes in many forms
Read MoreWhy Are Muslims So Concerned with Muhammad?
To say Muslims are offended by portrayals of Muhammad is missing the point…
Read More
How to Prevent Ethnic Cleansing in Syria
In the Muslim world, pluralism collides with democracy and sovereignty, which is far more interesting and alarming than the battle lines we’ve imposed on the Middle East—of secularists versus Islamists, of free-thinking liberals versus religious autocrats.
Read More
Dreaming Beyond the Madman: Reflections on the Revolution in Libya
The tragedy of a dictatorship is that they so eviscerate their countries that, even after they are gone, it’s hard for people to pick up the pieces and move forward. But I am hopeful in seeing the banner of the pre-Qaddafi monarchy rooted in the Sufi orders that led the resistance to colonialism.
Read More