John Hick, a celebrated theologian and philosopher who died earlier this year, was drawn to issues that transcend any particular tradition—the question of evil, the meaning of suffering, life after death, and religious diversity.
In The Mirage, 9/11 is actually 11/9, the day when Christian fundamentalists from Texas slammed airliners into Baghdad skyscrapers, sparking a war on terror that rages across a nearly unrecognizable North America. Will Americans go for a book where the world power is the United Arab States and the lead characters are almost all Arabs and Muslims?
The Weekly Standard’s Christopher Caldwell, who sees the integration of Muslims in Europe as troublesome, reviews two new books that see the integration of Muslims in Europe as troublesome.
Sadakat Kadri’s Heaven on Earth is the kind of book that can appeal to the curious, as well as the intellectually serious—that strange product which actually leaves you knowing more about Islam than you did before you started.
The reason we talk about Egypt’s Salafis isn’t because we’re debating theology, at least not primarily—I don’t think we’re actually concerned with the specifics of Islamic thought. We’re more worried about what Salafism and Islamism generally means for our interests, values, and the Muslim world. At bottom, our concerns over Salafis are concerns over what they’ll do when they’re in power.
