The Company You Keep

A few new books added to our sidebar items. One is on mystical poetry and symbolism in Islamic literatures, by Annemarie Schimmel. Another is a theoretical framework for understanding some of the issues plaguing Muslim majority societies. It covers a wide-range of disciplines including religion, economics and history. The newest one is a discussion of the stories of Joseph/Yusuf found in the Hebrew Bible and in the Qur’an.

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…

Here is a Wall Street Journal article on the exhibit America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far, at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, for which I was the lead academic advisor. Alas, the piece is behind a paywall. The show is the fourth in the Upper West Side museum's Global Cultural Exhibition Series, intended — as the name suggests — to create global citizens. And I can attest, from both observation and ancient personal experience, that the best way to broaden horizons isn't by lecturing kids about being better people but by letting them climb into, over and through things.…