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Book Review – Holy Ignorance – By Olivier Roy – NYTimes.com

Book Review – Holy Ignorance – By Olivier Roy – NYTimes.com. Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. Our major solstice holiday is what Roy calls a “cultural construct” rather than a sectarian ceremony, which explains why Muslims buy halal turkeys and Jews transformed Hanukkah into a gift-giving occasion. Mistakenly believing that Christmas is sacred, those who defend it find themselves propping up the profane. The Christ they want in Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue.

Muslim Moderation

Chris Dickey talks about “Christian Rage, Muslim Moderation” in a Newsweek column. While the title and lede are somewhat misleading, I think the overall point is one that needs to be hammered over and over again: No religion has a monopoly on extremists, ignorance, or blinders. Dr. Marranci gives a detailed example of the same idea at his blog. terror[ism][ists], terrorism

Newsday on America to Zanzibar

Here is a Newsday article on the exhibit America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far, at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, for which I was the lead academic advisor. It’s a good chance to shout out my friends from high school. “Our goal is to have children deal with differences in a healthy, positive way and encourage them to be inquisitive while exploring the world instead of running away from its differences,” Rashid said, an experience not so different from his years growing up in Elmont.