islam

… and jihad and sharia…

When FoxNews.com’s Lauren Green repeatedly pressed Reza Aslan, a Muslim, on why he wrote a book on Jesus, she was, without knowing it, putting the role of religious studies scholarship on a grand stage.

Worsening situation of Burma’s Muslims is instructive.

Punk rockers in Myanmar are gaining international attention for publicly denouncing Buddhist monks’ genocidal treatment of Muslim minorities.

With apologies to Reza Aslan, he is not an unbiased scholar of the historical Jesus, or of the history of Islam, or of any other phenomenon in the study of religion. Nor is any Christian or Jewish scholar, or any liberal or conservative scholar. I just wish he had said so.

In which the author of a new Jesus bio repeatedly addresses his Muslim background.

The Times columnist and Saudi Arabia have at least this in common: They like to deny women agency.

Musandam is Arabic for ‘the Hamptons.’

When we read of Enlightenment efforts to rehabilitate the image of Islam alongside the fact that outgoing Rep. Michele Bachmann raised more than $1 million in 25 days from a Muslim-themed witch hunt, it’s easy to ask how such openness could curdle into such paranoia. But that would be too simple.

Is there any there there without it?