New Bloggingheads: Being Muslim in America

Within a month, two interesting pieces regarding teaching and talking about religion came into my RSS feeder. [Apparently the new NY Times permalink generator next to the article doesn’t produce permalinks. Go NY Times, try really hard to make yourself irrelevant in the digital age, and you may actually succeed at something in the 21st century.] The first is about a professor asked to teach by a religious program. The second is by a professor of religion who writes about our inability to talk about religion in the classroom. I’m reminded of a story when I was teaching an introductory…

Sexist. or Islamophobic. I don’t know. Apparently Ikea won’t put images of women assembling furniture in its instructions because it might offend Muslims. Really. Smart money says they never thought about it and needed a way to cover their rears. Muslims are good for things after all. I personally would not be offended. I think it would encouragement for my wife to try putting the stuff together. Right now all I hear is that “Ikea shows a man doing it, so you need to do it.” I’m actually offended they don’t show women. I’m also offended that they only show…

Stunning piece of art. Click through the links. Voices: 99 Most Beautiful Names – A sculptural presentation of the Names for God from the Qur’an « Simerg « Ismailimail. Andrew Kosorok is an LDS Christian whose upbringing was rather non-traditional. Taught that God expected him to learn as much as he could, the events following 9/11 made his determination to learn about Islam even stronger and he turned to the Holy Qur’an. His goal as an artist was to seek constructive resolution and not confrontation.