Casualty Stats

شەيد كربلا كي مومينوں جب ياد آتي هے تژپ جاتي هے دنيا خون آنسوں بەاتي هے يا حسين shahîd-e karbalâ kî momînoñ jab yâd âtî hai taRap jâtî hai duniyâ xûn ânsûñ bahâtî hai yâ husayn When believers remember the Martyr of Karbala The world becomes upset Blood flows as tears Oh Husayn! From a Marsiya performed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

I was invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institute this summer on the theme of The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion and Violence. The initial calendar event is here. A pre-talk write-up is here, and post-talk write-up here, both from the Daily Chautauquan.  A video of the talk is embedded below.  

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture, saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving. The report was carried on the front page of the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom. [Read the article] . I was going to comment on Carey’s statement, but then I came across a response to the same article in the Muslims Under Progress blog. The section is entitled “Is Carey right?”. In fact all of the postings here are quite good except for the fact that the poster[?] seems to think that suicide bombers are martyrs if…