Islam

Before the jihadists fled Timbuktu in February, they burned the city's ancient manuscripts. Except all the ones the residents hid.

The prospects for genuine democracy in Egypt are more remote than ever. But there are other models of Islamic politics in the region.

I agree with everyone everywhere: Fox News's "why would a Muslim write about Jesus???" interview of Reza Aslan was pretty lousy stuff, yet he handled himself quite well, and good for him for selling more books because of it. All correct.

Yet I'm puzzled by what both Aslan's on-air defense and many subsequent commentators imply: that academic/professional credentials inform a person's writing to the exclusion of personal convictions.

Somehow, newspapers never publish banner headlines announcing "World's Largest Muslim State Fails to Persecute Christians."

In the decade since 9/11, it seems as though every trade publisher and university press has brought forth a guide to the Qur’an for the perplexed. Carl Ernst eschews the usual method for books of this sort.

It is difficult to know what to say in response to Mona Eltahawy’s explosive article on the experience of women in Middle Eastern countries. She writes about a level of institutionalized brutality that demands that readers pay attention.

At the same time, she doesn’t say anything new, nothing that wasn’t already made too vividly clear during the Arab Spring.

Christians would be outraged if they learned of
Muslims burning the Bible. Muslims have an even greater reverence for
their holy book.

TLC has a new reality show about American Muslims, set in Dearborn, Michigan. American Muslim Aman Ali has a spirited response.

Miro­slav Volf believes that Christians and Muslims
worship the same God. On November 3 he took that argument to
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

"Terrorism is not nearly as widespread as many people feared it would be after 9/11," says Charles Kurzman.

What happens when an anthropologist who happens to be a Pakistani, a former diplomat and a member of the Incident Man­agement Team of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shows up at 100 American mosques armed with questionnaires and a few white student research assistants? For the most part, nothing very controversial.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, and nearly half of its people are
Christians. They are often in conflict,
sometimes violent conflict, with Muslims.

Some of the best coverage of the firing of National Public Radio news analyst Juan Williams has been NPR's own. But the broader conversation has quickly become a chorus of ridiculousness.