“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Those cutting words, delivered on national television, effectively ended the career of Senator Joe McCarthy. For four years, McCarthy had enjoyed a kind of immunity as he smeared anyone he pleased while on a national witch hunt for Communist sympathizers.
Read moreYoussou N’Dour and “I Bring What I Love”: An Elegaic Meditation on Faith, Islam and Music
President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week as well as the candid and heated debates in Iran during its contentious presidential election provide yet another opportunity to revisit the sterile images of Islam that dominate the discussion both in the West and throughout the Muslim world as well. That discussion is framed by Muslim terrorists or extremists on the one hand squaring off against secular but resentful populations on the other. That is one facet of a kaleidoscope, a potent one but in no way the only one.
Read moreBookTV: Hitchens, Karabell, and Kirsch Debate Religion (2)
Christopher Hitchens, Zachary Karabell and Jonathan Kirsch debate Religion and Culture. The LA Times Festival of Books, 2007.
Read moreBookTV: Hitchens, Karabell, and Kirsch debate Religion (5)
Christopher Hitchens, Zachary Karabell and Jonathan Kirsch debate Religion and Culture. The LA Times Festival of Books, 2007.
Read moreBeyond the Crusade and Jihad
The only good things to come of 9/11, some say, are a greater consciousness of and a keener sensitivity to Islamic history, religion and culture. If that is so, the education has been slow and painful in the past six years, made all the more difficult by the gruesome reality of the Iraq war.
Read moreEnough Already with “The Trouble with Islam”
In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Trouble with Islam,” the author regurgitated all of the familiar canards about the inherent backwardness of Islam: that the religion at core promotes violence toward unbelievers and toward women, that the Quran calls for death to the Jews, that all attempts of interfaith dialogue in the West are based on a hopeless naivete and that the violence in Iraq proves that Muslims are prone to violence.
Read morePeace Be Upon You
Zachary Karabell talked about his book Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence, published by Knopf. Mr. Karabell traces the historical instances of peaceful coexistence between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people. The author contended that throughout the past fourteen centuries the different faiths have found common ground; from peaceful debate amongst scholars in the courts of the caliphs in Baghdad to medieval Spain where Jewish sages, Muslim philosophers, and Christian monks translated the meaning of God together. The author argued that the current state of religious tensions are solvable if one studies the past. Mr. Karabell responded to questions from the audience.
Read moreOur Muslim Problem
Over the weekend, the following headline appeared: “Muslims Assault U.S. Embassy in Indonesia.” I read it in one place, but no doubt variants of it appeared in many places. And I doubt that many people gave it a second glance, so normal and ubiquitous was its phraseology. And yet, it is symtomatic of how Islam is routinely portrayed and percieved in the West.
Read moreBeyond the Riots
As hard as it is to divert attention from the Cheney train-wreck this week, compared to his misuse of buckshot, the worldwide riots over the now-infmamous Danish cartoons is surely the more important story. Forget for a moment that much like the uproar over “The Satanic Verses” more than fifteen years ago, many of those protesting did not actually see the cartoons. Their publication was astutely used by extremists and by the governments of Syria and Iran to fan anti-Western flames and distract attention from their own manifold failings.
Read moreMisunderstanding Islam
In the wake of September 11, the reading interests of the American public have changed. To a lesser extent, so have the interests of readers throughout the Western world. This may not rank as one of the more significant consequences of the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, but it does reflect a new awareness on the part of millions of people--an awareness of just how ignorant they have been about Muslims.
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