The Christian Century

(RNS) At first, Sarah O'Neal thought the older boy's comment was directed at the towel she was carrying to water polo practice.

"What are you looking at towel-head?" he said.

And that's when it sunk in.

(RNS) After all the books, speeches, seminars, Facebook posts and mosque open houses to teach Americans about Islam in the wake of 9/11, Americans say they now know more about Islam than they did 10 years ago. The problem, pollsters say, is that Americans don't seem to like what they're learning.

(RNS) Brown, sticky, and wrinkly, dates seem a sad or unremarkable fruit. But every Ramadan, the Islamic holy month that began on Monday (Aug. 1), dates take on tremendous religious significance for the faith's 1.6 billion followers.

Throughout the world, Muslims will break Ramadan's required daytime fasts just as Prophet Muhammad did nearly 1,400 years ago: with dates.

(RNS) A new report asserts that anti-Muslim prejudice has worsened in recent years, but argues the trend could be reversed with greater community outreach.

Officially, President Obama was talking to the Muslim world in his State Department speech in May, but U.S. Muslims were equally interested in how their faith will be treated in a post-Osama bin Laden era.

Residents of the northern German city of Lübeck have long taken pride in four native sons—three Catholic priests and a Lutheran pastor—who were beheaded in quick succession on November 10, 1943, by the Nazi regime.

Is the pop standard "Baby It's Cold Outside" a heartwarming ode to winter romance or the worst example of American hedonism? After hearing the song at a Colorado church dance in the late 1940s, Egyptian exchange student Sayyid Qutb viewed the song as a moral indictment of the West—a view that some say could now shape the future of Egypt.