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New Books on Religion Podcast

A colleague is involved in this wonderful project. It’s a real pleasure to see so many of my friends coming out with books now. Please take a listen to podcasts. I would like to draw your attention to the website New Books in Religion (http://newbooksinreligion.com/). This is a regular interview podcast with authors of new books exploring religion and religious studeis. Being an Islamicist, I find the study of Islam both essential and illuminating for the study of religion more generally. Many of the books that will be discussed on New Books in Religion revolve around Islamic studies. Additionally, there…

Reading the Qur’an – Part 2 – Interpreting and Translating

Finally, I’m getting around to writing the second part of my three part post on Reading the Qur’an. (Parts 1 and 3) The catalyst for this event was this post by Abu Dilbert (yes, that Scott Adams). Part one of the series talked about the Arabic of the Qur’an and scholarly apparatus of the Sunni community that developed to deal with interpreting the word of God. The idea that God’s word is not necessarily clear to humans should come as no surprise, and when you introduce translations, the problem is further compounded. Most Muslims view any translation as actually an…

Interview with G. Willow Wilson

Rearrange Your Head: An Interview with American Muslim Convert and Memoirist G. Willow Wilson | RDBook | ReligionDispatches. Sheikhas and alimas [female spiritual and religious authorities], if you can find any — and you have to look pretty hard — will totally change the way you think about Islam and gender. There is a long and revered tradition of female scholarship in this religion, but it’s dying out. Most of the female scholarship we have now is part of a new tradition—postmodern academia—not a continuation of the old. Old school sheikhas, educated the traditional way, will rearrange your head. In…