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On a New York Times Roll

The NYT had an interesting series of unrelated articles about Muslims over the last week. Deprogramming Jihadists I respect that the article is trying to show how the Saudis are attempting to deal with demon they helped create, but really does not address some of the inconsistencies in the approach. For example: Saudi schools teach a version of world history that emphasizes repeated battles between Muslims and nonbelieving enemies. Whether to Afghanistan in the 1980s or present-day Iraq, Saudi Arabia has exported more jihadist volunteers than any other country; 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudis. and…

Why the World Needs Religious Studies | Culture | Religion Dispatches

Why the World Needs Religious Studies | Culture | Religion Dispatches. May the field forgive me for offering a bit of very crude historical psychoanalysis and master-narrativizing to catch everyone up on where we stand. Academic, non-sectarian religious studies in the United States can be more or less traced to the Supreme Court’s 1963 Abington Township v. Schempp decision, which carved out a distinction between teaching about religion, which is okay, and the teaching of religion, which violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Catechists had to shuffle out of public classrooms, and suddenly there was space for a new kind…

Princeton University – Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims

Princeton University – Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims. Princeton professor Mark Cohen has spent his 40-year academic career in a quiet corner of Jewish scholarship, studying the daily life of Jews who lived in the Muslim world 1,000 years ago. But in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his once-obscure area of expertise has been catapulted into the limelight.