New The Kominas Tour Poster

We’ve added a new typelist on the left bar today to recognize the Ahl al-Kitâb, People of the Book, very broadly defined. One of the things I’ve tried to argue for is that Muslim community cannot see itself or its issues in isolation. After a generous comment from the Velveteen Rabbi, I thought we should practice what we preach. We are actively seeking suggestions for Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, etc., blogs that are attempting to grapple with or explain aspects of their faiths.

CNN is reporting that al-Zarqawi has released an audio tape that justifies the killing of Muslim civilians based on the teachings of so-called Islamic scholars. Here is the intro from CNN: “A chilling, rambling audio file thought to be from the most-wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says religious doctrine justifies the killing of innocent Muslims by insurgents. On the audio, the speaker says in Arabic: ‘The shedding of Muslim blood … is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.’ The speaker defends suicide attacks, saying, ‘killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom operations…

The next few weeks promise to be very exciting here at islamicate. This weekend is the Islam in America Conference at Harvard. I’ll be there and trying to do daily updates on the proceedings of the conference. I’m also going to see if I can get some of the panelists to sit down with me and share some more detailed thoughts, if not guest-post with us. I’ve also been conspiring with Haroon of Avari-Nameh fame to see if we can discuss some topics in the open between our blogs. I’m a big fan of the old school way of Islamic…