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Boston Review — Jan-Werner Müller: Making Muslim Democracies

Boston Review — Jan-Werner Müller: Making Muslim Democracies. This suggestive analogy between Christian and Muslim Democracy is not lost on Western politicians and intellectuals, but many of them have been at pains to reject it. One line of dismissal, pessimistic in its conclusions, argues that European Catholics only turned to democracy under instruction from the Vatican. Because Muslims do not have anything resembling a hierarchy or central institution of faith, the Christian Democratic example is, according to these critics, irrelevant.

Interview on NPR on Riyaaz Qawwali

I was recently interviewed on NPR about Riyaaz Qawwali, a group out of Austin, TX. Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Hofstra University, says that many qawwaliartists working in South Asia today have limited themselves. He believes this American group is bringing the music back to its roots.  “You know, I think there’s been so much concern about what is Islam, and what isn’t, politically speaking and artistically speaking,” Rashid says, “that there’s been a push in modern qawwali to actually sanitize it and make it very sterile — and almost rule-bound — rather than ecstatic and devotional. For me, I think…