Osama and Orientalism, my latest over at Religion Dispatches.
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The Cordoba Initiative
I would like to direct your attention to the Cordoba Initiative. Although their tagline “Improving Muslim-West Relations” would have you think that they are unaware of the last generation of civilizational debates and identity politics, they actually show a lot of potential. There are some good people working there and their contacts are deep. Poke around, have fun, and tell them to change their tagline. The best part is that they promise to be a media portal. If they would only supply donuts, I would be truly happy.
NEWSPAPER COLUMN: “My Family’s First Trip To A Mosque” | The Crescent Post
NEWSPAPER COLUMN: “My Family’s First Trip To A Mosque” | The Crescent Post. In September 2007 our Honda Odyssey idled in the gravel parking lot of a mosque in Clemson, S.C. As it turned out, the unadorned aluminum structure sat ironically and lonely on Old Stone Church Road in the Deep South. Suddenly my then-2-year-old daughter voiced the words that apparently reverberate in America from time to time: “Mosque … scary.”
On Being a Conservative-Liberal Muslim (or why the progressive label is bad)
Several things began to come together in my thinking at the MLT Conference in Copenhagen. To be clear, it was not a result of the planning of the MLT, but a series of amorphous thoughts that started to click from meeting people at the conference. With the Progressive Faith Blog Con coming straight after, these ideas began gaining more clarity. Coincidentally, both the good folks at Progressive Islam (1, 2, 3) and Von Aurum published pieces that further moved my thoughts forward. I had been planning on this post for some time, but as the adage goes “Man proposes, God…