What means more to Steve, being a new Mac user, or being a new Christian?
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Law and Cultural Purity
Not all fundamentalism is about violence. Sometimes it’s about using the law. Unfortunately, some of our elected representatives are aiming to use the law to define what it means to be “American” by excluding Muslims. They seek to turn back the clock on American inclusion, forgetting that when you can exclude one group, you can exclude any group. We must accept that we live in a global village. Without that basic premise, we miss many of the political patterns emerging both in the US and around the world. We can react to the “new” in two ways: embrace it or…
Religion As Critique | Reading Religion
Religion As Critique | Reading Religion. Irfan Ahmad’s text, Religion as Critique, is an ambitious work that seeks to open a new approach to the understanding of Muslims: an anthropology of philosophy. As a result, his book covers a vast amount of material. The text reads like two separate endeavors—a historical, methodological study, and the author’s original work. Since the author recognizes this structure and guides the reader to be aware of it, the book does hold together fairly well. At the same time, as a reviewer, it makes more sense to treat the two parts as divisible, since they each…
Which Muhammad? (More than a hand?)
I was watching the documentary The Rockstar and the Mullahs, and a particular segment leapt out at me. One of the self-styled mullahs (I say this because his formal education in the religious system seems to have been non-existent) says that the world will be better when we start doing things like cutting off the hands of thieves. He’s quite happy to say only he and his followers know what true Islam is, and all others who call themselves Muslim are “sons of pigs.” I’m sure he and his ilk would be more than happy to decry people like the…