What is the the Qur’an? An Agnostic Jew Speaks. Lesley Hazelton at TEDx

“My Faith in America” by Aleem Walji « Karim R. Lakhani’s Infrequent Musings. But that’s what puzzles me about the current national conversation. I grew up in the United States, in the deep south. I practiced my faith easily and integrated into a community in Georgia that supported Newt Gingrich. And nobody questioned my faith or my commitment to America. Not until after 9/11. That’s when seemingly educated but ill-informed scholars asserted that Islam and the West were caught in an unavoidable clash of civilizations; that there is something fundamentally inconsistent between Islam and western values.

The recent exchange between Haroon and Reid has got me thinking and churning and preventing me from working on my dissertation!. I was struck by Reids’ quotation of Jesus Christ (PBUH)saying: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 and then reflecting on my own Shia-Ismaili-Muslim religous education and the attribution of the following the following hadith to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH): “I am the city of knowledge and ‘Ali is its gate.” The similarities and implications are very interesting. What is the Prophet implying when he says…