If Muslims are responsible for Islamic terrorism, are Muslim-bashers responsible for the massacre in Norway?
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Karen Armstrong Interview
She talks a lot about religion and politics in this particular piece. I think her history of the Sunni-Shi’ah political divide is a bit off. Arguably the first empires fighting about this were in the 11th century (Fatimids and Abbasids), but I would argue the political division goes back to the time of the Prophet. However, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t live well together. Karen Armstrong
Law and Cultural Purity
Not all fundamentalism is about violence. Sometimes it’s about using the law. Unfortunately, some of our elected representatives are aiming to use the law to define what it means to be “American” by excluding Muslims. They seek to turn back the clock on American inclusion, forgetting that when you can exclude one group, you can exclude any group. We must accept that we live in a global village. Without that basic premise, we miss many of the political patterns emerging both in the US and around the world. We can react to the “new” in two ways: embrace it or…
Distrust Between West And Islam
Distrust Between West And Islam. ”There’s an osmosis in war,” declares the once idealistic army lieutenant Hearn in Norman Mailer’s classic novel The Naked and the Dead. ”Call it what you will, but the victors always tend to assume the . . . the, eh, trappings of the loser.” Of course, the ”war on terror” wasn’t really a war, and it is far from clear who emerged from it as victor and loser. Nonetheless, after the tragedy in Oslo, the osmosis is obvious. These sorts of attacks were meant to be the preserve of the Islamists who have dominated a…