“The Taliban and the Islamophobes have a very similar reading of Islam, and their political fates are in part dependent on this shared understanding of the religion. Those of us in the vast middle between these two extremes can take very concrete steps to end the divide between the West and Islam that exists nowhere more strongly than in the minds of these extremists. I offer three concrete recommendations at the end of Crusade 2.0.”
American Christians assume that what prophecy does is predict specific events to happen. And of course that’s the way the Book of Revelation has been read. They read it, as you say, as predicting this means this, or the beast is this. But prophesy, as we know, is a highly interpretative art, and the way this book lives and has lived for two thousand years is by interpretation and reinterpretation.
A report from India in the wake of new protests. “The emotions are much stronger—the sense of concern, the sense of anxiety, the urgency,” an activist says. “You have your fellow beings torturing themselves… So when this is happening in Tibet, of course people here feel very intense and strongly. But what we can do is very limited.”