IIA – Teaching Islam

Two articles by Ted Swedenburg on Islam and Hip-Hop. One on the 5% and one on the international context. Man knows his stuff, and it helps mark a new face of Islam that’s growing world-wide, the Western Muslim. No more gharabzadegi for us, we sit (un)comfortably in all worlds.

Reza has some interesting things to say about Islam: The foundation of Islamic pluralism can be summed up in one indisputable verse: "There can be no compulsion in religion." That means that the antiquated partitioning of the world into spheres of belief (dar al-Islam) and unbelief (dar al-Harb), which was first developed during the Crusades but which still maintains its grasp on the imaginations of traditionalist theologians, is utterly unjustifiable. It also means that the ideology of those Wahhabists who wish to return Islam to some imaginary ideal of original purity must be once and for all abandoned. Islam is…

ABC News on Campus reporter Reshma Kirpalani blogs: via blogs.abcnews.com Hussein Rashid, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recognizes this sentiment of bin Laden as a larger than life threat among Muslim-American youth — similar to his generation’s experience during the Cold War. “We’re now getting a group of young adults whose first conscious memory was formed by Osama bin Laden. Their biggest enemy has always been Al Qaeda and bin Laden,” Rashid said.