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Middle-earth according to Mordor – Laura Miller – Salon.com

Middle-earth according to Mordor – Laura Miller – Salon.com. Because Gandalf refers to Mordor as the “Evil Empire” and is accused of crafting a “Final Solution to the Mordorian problem” by rival wizard Saruman, he obviously serves as an avatar for Russia’s 20th-century foes. But the juxtaposition of the willfully feudal and backward “West,” happy with “picking lice in its log ‘castles’” while Mordor cultivates learning and embraces change, also recalls the clash between Europe in the early Middle Ages and the more sophisticated and learned Muslim empires to the east and south. Sauron passes a “universal literacy law,” while…

My Thoughts on “God Is Not One” at Patheos

Patheos was kind enough to let me into their book club on God is not One, by Stephen Prothero. An excerpt is below. Please go to Patheos to read the whole, and submissions by other authors. Prothero takes the time to respond to all of us. Muslim Blogger Hussein Rashid on “God Is Not One” | {Take & Read}. Stephen Prothero’s new book, God is not One, expands on the themes of earlier book Religious Literacy. In particular, as the title suggests, he attacks the notion that all religions are one as being “a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous,…

Book Review: “Muslim Women in America”

Not my review, and the only reason I highlight this review is because the reviewer gets it: The authors admit that their book “concentrates primarily on Muslim women who are actively affirming Islam.” Skeptics, doubters and agnostics are scarcely acknowledged (Irshad Manji, the controversial author of the important work The Trouble With Islam, is disposed of in a paragraph). The book’s unstated focus is Sunni Islam and the (African-American) Nation of Islam. Little attention is paid to women’s experiences in Ahmadiyyah, Ismaili Shia or Twelver Shia communities—all of which are thriving in the United States. (The Islamic scholar Linda Walbridge’s…