Category: Inter-faith

Inter-faith

“I’ve only met two other Muslims in my life, and they both smelled like incense.”

This choice quote comes from a young white Christian American Boy Scout upon reflecting on meeting  young brown Muslim American Boy scouts at a Scouting Jamboree.  Its from a very interesting article in Time Magazine about Muslim Boy Scouts.  Its jarring for me to realize that in the US Boy Scouts have been affiliated with the Christian faith.  Growing up in Karachi I was a cub and a boy scout as part of our Jamat Khana activities and never once thought of it as being a Christian Institution. Strange.  Any way Scouting is one way for integration between various communities. 

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Books Inter-faith Intra-faith Reading Lists

Reading the Qur’an – part 3 – Translations and Secondary Sources [updated][2x]

islamoyankee

[I’ve jumped a head to part 3 since several commentors have asked about translations and secondary material.] I’ve done one post already on the vagaries of Qur’anic Arabic. Learning Arabic does not really help in learning to read the Qur’an in the sense of its interpretive history, but it does help you appreciate the large semantic range of each word in the Qur’an. (A really good secondary source for this discussion, although somewhat technical, is The Qur’an’s Self-Image.) As a result, when I look up passages, I don’t rely on just one translation, but rather several. I also use languages…

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Books Inter-faith Intra-faith Religion

Reading the Qur’an – part 1 – Interpretation

islamoyankee

The Qur’an (also Quran, Koran) is the Muslim holy book, believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – through the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) – over the span of 23 years. The Arabic language of the time was a nascent language of literature, used mostly as a mnemonic guide in its written form; because of the close association of Semitic Languages (including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac) the turn of Arabic into a literary language was not unprecedented. The script did not (and still does not) mark short vowels, punctuation, differentiate amongst different letters, and depending on the scribe,…

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Current Affairs Inter-faith Intra-faith Religion

Out of Context

islamoyankee

One of the things that happens after a terrorist bombing committed by those who claim to be Muslim is that Islamophobes start quoting the Qur’an out of context saying that Islam is a violent religion dedicated to taking over the world and enslaving everyone else (yes, it is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion revisited). I’m waiting for the day when some Islamophobe says the proof that Islam is Judeophobic is that Muslims revere a prophet named Isa who entered a synagogue and flipped over tables and drove people out claiming that they were practicing a false religion. It…

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Inter-faith Intra-faith Shi'ism

On Talking About Traditions

islamoyankee

Via Faith Gambler, I found this interesting piece on talking about Jesus to Muslims. It seems like a good way to recognize and talk about difference while remaining true to one’s own beliefs. This conversation wasn’t about conversion, and it wasn’t about watering down the traditions to make them palatable. Rather, it was a respectful discourse on a serious point of contention between the two traditions. Much respect. Rachel has a post about a missing dot and Jerusalem. One of the joys about writing is that one can always ignore authorial intent, which pretty clearly laid out her post, and…

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Current Affairs Inter-faith

Imperium – Qur’an Desecration, part 1 [updated]

islamoyankee

[update]: I didn’t realize the stories of the Qur’an being flushed are at least a year old. It strikes me that this lends much more credence to the claim, considering within 48 hours government concluded its initial investigation and began to blame Newsweek for poor reporting. Transferance. The recent report that the Qur’an may have been flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay has created two trains of thought in my mind. One external, and the purpose of this post, and one internal, the subject of a second post, hence the title. Although it is looking like the original report…

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Inter-faith Intra-faith Religion

Faith [updated]

islamoyankee

Please answer the questions yourself, here, at American Street, or on your own blog. From American Street: Are you a religioius/ spiritual person? Were you born into your faith or did you come to it later? Was there a particular event in your life that changed your religious/ spiritual philososphy? Do you share your faith with others? 1. I am deeply religious. I would like to think that also means I am spiritual, but I know the two are not linked causally. Nor does saying something necessarily make it true. There is deity but God, Muhammad is the messenger of…

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Books Inter-faith Intra-faith

Muslims and the Book (of the comic and graphic variety)

islamoyankee

Oh so many moons ago, I read a post on Dove’s Eye View on a new series of comic books coming out Egypt. There are more details on her site, but the salient point is that the author/illustrator has Muslims fighting for the City of All Faiths; religious harmony is still an aspiration in the Arab Middle East. He grew up reading DC comics, and my personal take is that Marvel was always better at allegory and moral ambiguity (see, for example, these descriptions of the X-Men graphic novel, “God Love, Man Kills”), and DC better at black/white, right/wrong stories.…

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