I have to say, it has been quite some time since I agreed with Bernard Lewis. However, I find myself nodding along with 6 of his 7 answers. Answer to Question 6 is a standard neocon answer and really ignores the broad scope of history that he seems to arguing from everywhere else. For Ottomanist – he’s not an Arabist nor an Islamicist – I’m surprised he doesn’t mention modern Turkey as a democratic state.
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Muslim Education in Africa … and Pakistan … and the US
Interesting journal entry. Just wish it was better formatted.
Pakistan’s Sufis
The Smithsonian Magazine has a feature on Pakistani Sufis, including one figure I am doing a lot of research on. It unfortunately still suffers from a bit of Orientalizing and exoticizing tendencies, but for a description of what happens, it’s pretty good. The “whys” are a bit shakier. Check out the photo gallery too. Pakistan, Sufism, qalandar
Gaza Crisis [1/29]
This will most likely be my last major link round-up on the topic. There are individual threads of the cost of the crisis that I may develop, but with the current incursion over, the need for relatively quick, major round-ups has dissipated. One of the things I tried to communicate through my sourcing was that the conflict is not a religious issue. I consciously choose to limit the number of Muslim sources to indicate that there was opposition to Israel’s actions that was not based in a conception of a Cosmic War. I also wanted to highlight the number of…