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Jews, Muslims, and Orthodoxy

Over at Talk Islam, Abu Noor talks about what the face of Islam in America will look like. He picks up two issues that I have argued previously: 1. The Catholic-Protestant divide is not a useful analogy for discussing the Sunni-Shi’ah divide. 2. We do not need a Reformation in Islam. (See more recently, my talk on Muslims in the Media (part 2)) Where I have difficulty with his argument is the extension of the analogy with Judaism. I agree that the movement approach (Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, etc.) better fits the Muslim experience. We generally speak of turuq (paths), of…

The Hijab Alternative | KABOBfest

The Hijab Alternative | KABOBfest. Perhaps, instead of covering every part of a woman’s body less her eyes, it would be more effective to just cover the man’s eyes. That would really solve the problem once and for all. Chastise the man who removes his blindfold in public, then no woman would ever be called a disobedient whore for stepping a foot outside her house. Here is a novel idea: How about the ultra-religious start teaching their kids that it is not OK to be publicly perverted, instead of teaching them that women who walk around without a head cover…

Back to that issue again

The basic response is the same as it was in the original article, the Ismailis aren’t Muslim because the majority of [unnamed] scholars hold that that they aren’t because of various [unnamed] beliefs and practices…. Important point, the Ismailis were recognized as the Caliphs of the Muslim community by a large segment of the ummah in the 10th and 11th centuries when the Fatimid Empire held sway.