Mr Toledano : America the gift shop

Interfaith Voices on NYPD Surveillance & Accountability Issues « MACLC’s Weblog. Recalling that March 13 marks the 10th anniversary of NYPD Operations Order 11 explicitly forbidding racial profiling, representatives called on the NYPD to add religion to the list of characteristics such as color, race, and ethnicity, that it would not use to profile New Yorkers, and to put into practice what Commissioner Kelly promulgated 10 years ago.

tabsir.net » The haram that is not sacred. There is a dangerous dualism that has haunted Islamic societies since the very start of the faith. I am speaking about the haram that results from individuals and groups that seek to enforce a distinction between haram and halal through violence. The recent waves of sectarian killings are a chilling reminder of the harm that can be caused in the name of stamping out haram.

Islam and the Lagging Economies of the Arab World : The New Yorker. But, before consigning a fifth of humanity to the dustbin of economic history, one might consider, more broadly, whether it makes sense to place such an emphasis on religion in explaining the underdevelopment of so many Muslim countries. To start with, it’s worth noting—and Kuran and Lewis, to their credit, do note it—that Islam, at least in its original formulation, was far from hostile to business. As the centuries passed, many Muslim regions fell badly behind the West, but the most immediate explanation involves not Islam but…