Islamic influence on popular culture focus of UTA forum

The below excerpt from the following article, where President Bush addressed Evangelical groups on National Prayer Day was quite surprising to me. It’s appears to be a major departure from some of his previous rhetoric. In fact, the article itself points to how this is fairly out of character. I must say that in a vacuum, devoid of the context of this administration, I very much like this quote. For me, it seems to hearken back to the Idea of America, which I love so much. I understand that people have different views of what Justice is, but nevertheless, I…

ABC News on Campus reporter Reshma Kirpalani blogs: via blogs.abcnews.com Hussein Rashid, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recognizes this sentiment of bin Laden as a larger than life threat among Muslim-American youth — similar to his generation’s experience during the Cold War. “We’re now getting a group of young adults whose first conscious memory was formed by Osama bin Laden. Their biggest enemy has always been Al Qaeda and bin Laden,” Rashid said.

Reza has some interesting things to say about Islam: The foundation of Islamic pluralism can be summed up in one indisputable verse: "There can be no compulsion in religion." That means that the antiquated partitioning of the world into spheres of belief (dar al-Islam) and unbelief (dar al-Harb), which was first developed during the Crusades but which still maintains its grasp on the imaginations of traditionalist theologians, is utterly unjustifiable. It also means that the ideology of those Wahhabists who wish to return Islam to some imaginary ideal of original purity must be once and for all abandoned. Islam is…