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Islam
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Islam is a religious tradition stressing submission to God according to the revelations to the prophet Muhammad (570/571-632 CE), whom Muslims hold to be the last in a line of prophets including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muhammad's revelations are recorded in the Qur'an, the sacred scripture of Islam, and Muslims also consider hadith—reports of Muhammad's sayings and actions—to be authoritative guides for moral life. Divergent views on the proper leadership of the Muslim community (ummah) led to a split between Sunni and Shi'a Islam. With around 1.5 billion followers, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, predominating across the Middle East, North Africa, and many parts of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Political Islam, often known as Islamism, is currently widespread in many Muslim-majority countries; most Islamist groups identify with the ideals of democracy, while a small minority support terrorism.
Alexa West is a sophomore in the Edmund. A Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is majoring in Culture and Politics with a specialization in International Security, and is receiving a certificate in the Program for Jewish Civilization. She currently serves as a producer for The God Vote.
This week, The God Vote co-hosts Jacques Berlinerblau and Sally Quinn turned their gaze abroad and discussed the religious implications of the current unrest in Syria and Egypt.
This week, The God Vote co-hosts Jacques Berlinerblau and Sally Quinn turned their gaze abroad and discussed the religious implications of the current unrest in Syria and Egypt.
In November, 2009, peace-loving Switzerland shocked itself and the world when over 57 percent of its voters supported a referendum to ban construction of new minarets. The government had opposed the proposition on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, contravening Switzerland's commitment to religious freedom. In the expectation that the measure would fail and fearing that a "positive" campaign would fuel fear, the government did not actively campaign against it. In Switzerland's unique...
Sam Dinger is a student in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, majoring in International Politics and Arab Studies. He serves as the Research Supervisor for The God Vote.
WATCH: "The core principles of Sharia are analogous to the core principles of the Constitution," says the imam behind the planned Islamic center near Ground Zero. Imam Rauf also talks about his hopes for the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolts in the Middle East and what he thinks of the arguments made by...
WATCH: "The core principles of Sharia are analogous to the core principles of the Constitution," says the imam behind the planned Islamic center near Ground Zero. Imam Rauf also talks about his hopes for the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolts in the Middle East and what he thinks of the arguments made by...
The irony is familiar but still troubling: America, a nation proudly built by and for immigrants, today has a badly broken immigration system. But the debate about how to fix it has been fractious and unproductive. We seem to be stalled. At Georgetown's Berkley Center, a group of scholars and activists last week explored how religious leaders and communities see the issue and what they are doing about it.
Dean K. Lieberman is a student in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He serves as the Scripting Director for The God Vote.
One of most prominent questions facing international commentators today: are Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya (if Qaddafi falls) going to become the new Irans? Professor Samer Shehata, this week's guest on The God Vote with Sally Quinn and Jacques Berlinerblau, asserts Egypt is not going the way of theocracy. The year 1979, he says, is a false analogy to...
One of most prominent questions facing international commentators today: are Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya (if Qaddafi falls) going to become the new Irans? Professor Samer Shehata, this week's guest on The God Vote with Sally Quinn and Jacques Berlinerblau, asserts Egypt is not going the way of theocracy. The year 1979, he says, is a false analogy to...
A group of American Christians, most of them evangelicals, met for four days last weekend with a distinguished group of Moroccans at Eastern Mennonite University, concluding with a public session Monday at Georgetown University's Berkley Center. To an outsider, the point of the conclave was not easy to fathom. It opened with a showing of a terrifying film about nuclear threats: Countdown to Zero, and concluded with heartfelt statements of shared interests and values. What was it all about?...
The rapid-fire events in Tunisia and Egypt have caught people everywhere by surprise. That's especially true in the neighborhood (North Africa and the Middle East). As I headed for Morocco for a weekend conference, I hoped to emerge with a far clearer understanding, both of what sparked these popular upheavals now, and what might lie ahead. What I found were people torn between a euphoric hope, especially at the unleashing of freedom of speech, and uncertainty laced with fear for the future....
The great majority of Bangladesh's 160 million citizens are Muslims, making it one of the world's largest Muslim communities. Bengali Islam is distinctive, shaped by a long history in which adherents of different religions lived side by side. A Muslim family prayed five times a day, but also went to the Hindu temple. Bengali Islam was seen as tolerant, infused with the poetry and language of love of the Sufi traditions. Bengali women rarely wore head coverings. People speak, with pride, about...
President Barack Obama's November 10 trip to Indonesia was short and bitter sweet: short because he had to leave before the Merapi volcano spewed more dark ash into the skies (what a metaphor!); bitter sweet because his voyage unfolded amid growing doubts about his "Muslim world outreach." Whether those misgivings subside or multiply will depend less on the atmospherics of diplomacy and far more on the substance of US foreign policy.
When pitfalls of the modern godless secular state are decried, Norway is often invoked as an example. So Norwegians took note when the minister of development and the environment, Eric Solheim, published an op ed in a leading newspaper with the headline "Norway takes God seriously." And the next day he spoke at the opening of a conference on religion and development in Oslo. His message? It's obvious that religion is hugely important in the contemporary world and especially in the poorest...
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which describes itself as "a nonpartisan 'fact tank,'" has recently garnered immense media and popular attention with its "U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey."
This blog post originally appeared in The Public Discourse, an online blog arm of the Witherspoon Institute, on September 22, 2010. The second installment of this blog post is available here.
So Terry Jones won't "today, not ever" burn a Quran. I guess the media can now move on to sensationalizing some other previous unknown willing to say ludicrous things and get us all talking about it for a week.
There's a Ghanaian proverb that goes, roughly: "Plenty of meat and fish does not spoil the soup." The saying suggests that diversity and robust faith can thrive, all mixed together. Looking at the debates swirling about during these dog days of summer in America, it's worth asking whether such a commitment to energetic religious diversity, a covenant that is an integral part of America's heritage, is alive and well today.
When South Africa was emerging from the dark shadows of the apartheid era, Malaysia was one place it looked for successful examples of how to address the difficult legacy of racial inequality. Malaysia's Malay citizens (about 60 percent of the total) lagged behind other groups and helping them to "catch up" was a deliberate government policy.
With all the loud clamoring about the proposed Islamic Center to be built near Ground Zero, reasonable voices are hard to discern. One thing is clear: this is not a debate about religious freedom. A mosque by peaceful Muslims of good will, unrelated to perpetrating the 9/11 attacks has every right to exist anywhere on these shores. It is the worst form of religious intolerance--and very un-American--to think that one form of religion has limits on where and when it may be practiced.
In the 20th century, crackdowns against civil society frequently occurred under the guise of ideology. Since the demise of Communism, most crackdowns seem to be motivated... by sheer power politics. But behind these actions, there is an idea, an alternative conception of how societies should be organized. And it is an idea that democracies must challenge.
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Speech before the Community of Democracies, July 3, 2010
I couldn't agree more with our...
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Speech before the Community of Democracies, July 3, 2010
I couldn't agree more with our...
Analyst Andrew Tabler discusses the complex relations between the craftily secular Syrian state and its Sunni Muslim majority.
On Feb. 15, 1947, the Exodus 1947 set sail for Palestine with some 4,500 Jewish refugees, most of whom were survivors of the Holocaust. The organizers of this fabled expedition fully expected the British to forcefully prevent the passengers from disembarking. As things turned out, they got more than they bargained for: three people died, including a U.S. sailor bludgeoned to death resisting the King's Navy.
These are exciting but tense times in the West African nation of Guinea. A presidential election is fast approaching, on June 27, with legislative contests to follow six months later. The elections are playing out against a 50-plus-year history of dictatorship, a current military regime that came to power in a coup d'état, and memories of horrific violence last September when over 150 people died in clashes and many women were raped in broad daylight.
In a previous post, I voiced the fear that the Obama administration was placing U.S. international religious freedom (IRF) policy on the back burner, subordinating it to other less compelling administration priorities, or clearing the deck for initiatives that might be complicated by a robust defense of religious liberty abroad (such as outreach to Muslim majority countries or promoting international gay rights).
One of South Africa's leading papers, The Mail & Guardian, announced last Friday that it had underestimated "the depth of anger ignited' by a cartoon it published earlier. It depicted the Prophet Muhammad lying on a psychiatrist's couch, with a thought bubble over his head that said, 'Other prophets have followers with a sense of humor!' The weekly said it regretted "the sense of injury it caused many Muslims." The cartoon was by Jonathan Shapiro, known as Zapiro, whose sharp satiric pen has...
My grandmother, a very wise woman, gave me a piece of advice that sticks in my mind to this day: "A gingerbread he went to Rome, a gingerbread he came home." She was urging that, going into any new adventure or faced with any new idea, I should not be stuffy and stuck in the outlines of the way I understood things, because if I did, I would miss the chance to learn and change. Doing things that way, I might just as well stay home.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (IRF) has come down hard on the Obama administration for its failure to promote international religious liberty. "U.S. foreign policy on religious freedom," said Commission chairman Leonard Leo, "is missing the mark."
A conversation between Jacque Berlinerblau and Dr. Melanie Adrian on the headscarf debates in France.
Don't blame Nigeria's violent conflicts on religion, Nigeria's acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, argued forcefully during a far-ranging discussion last Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. The brutal conflict that took place near the city of Jos last month (where as many as 500 people died) reflects tensions between longtime residents and recent settlers, plus economic misery, not a clash between Christianity and Islam.
Fresh from his victory in the U.S. Congress, President Obama is seizing the initiative on foreign policy. Thus, instead of making up with Bibi Netanyahu, administration officials from the president on down have maintained a tough--and even obstinate--line with the Israelis. This cerebral president is now leading rather than responding, fighting rather than trying to simply reason with his friends and his adversaries.
Do religious individuals and groups possess a right to share their beliefs with others in the hope that those beliefs will be embraced? For many, including most Muslims and Christians, religion represents an objective and universal Truth, one that comprehends the temporal good and the eternal destiny of all persons. For those who believe they have access to such a Truth, the desire to offer it to others is both natural and rational. After all, if the claims of Islam are true, should we not...
February 11 has come and gone. The 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution did not witness a historic confrontation between a human rights movement struggling to be heard and a regime that used every trick in the book to mobilize its supporters. Bussed in and bought off, driven by their own volition or by a massive case of collective false consciousness, the regime's supporters came a million strong, to proclaim, repeat or dutifully mimic their love for the Revolution, for Imam...
On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to his native land aboard an Air France jumbo jet. Ten tumultuous days later the Islamic Republic was born.
You are going to hate this column.
As ABC News first reported, Trijicon, a Michigan company, has been supplying rifle scopes to the U.S. military with serial numbers containing scriptural citations. (Thursday, the company decided to stop doing that and to help erase the existing cites.) Was it a stupid practice? Probably. Unconstitutional? Not likely. More interesting to me is how responses to story reflect some fundamental divides among Christians about how they reconcile their religious convictions with military action.
THE Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington.
-- Flynt and Hillary Leverett, New York Times, January 5, 2010.
-- Flynt and Hillary Leverett, New York Times, January 5, 2010.
As ever, stories of the demise of religion (most recently, according to E.J. Dionne, because concern for the economy has superseded "culture war" issues) have proven to be exaggerated. Two days after E.J. wrote that epithet, an Islamic radical attempted to bring down a U.S. airliner on its approach to Detroit. And, three days ago, Brit Hume outraged the chattering classes with his suggestion that Tiger Woods should consider converting to Christianity. If religion took a holiday, it was...
The dust has yet to settle on the scramble for charitable gifts at the end of 2009. In the last few weeks, a combination of extraordinary need and new outreach technologies produced an extraordinary flood of appeals. Up to 60 percent of charitable gifts generally come in the last days of the year.
THE most important moment in President Obama's Dec. 1 speech on Afghanistan came when he outlined his administration's exit strategy. "Additional American and international troops," he asserted, "will allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July 11, 20011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground."
A friend's Facebook link took me to a CNN article that I thought would infuriate me. The headline was "McDonnell won't disavow Robertson's Islam remarks." What CNN failed to articulate was, to my surprise, that Virginia Governor-elect McDonnell sounded more Madisonian than Robertsonian.
Egypt, a country of some 82 million people, once was the intellectual, strategic and political hub of the Arab world. But today, Egypt is adrift. Cairo seems more crowded, more polluted and more chaotic than ever. The country is suffocating under a cloud of political ineptitude, apathy and cynicism, the likes of which I have never seen in Egypt.
Aicha Ech Channa, a gutsy Moroccan woman, has worked for five decades with young unmarried mothers, who stand at the very bottom of the social heap in her country. Even if their pregnancy resulted from rape, they are condemned as prostitutes and thrown out by their families, and their babies are stigmatized as bastards.
Columnists and bloggers toil to put words and thoughts in good order. We deliver our pieces (often late!) to anxious editors with our name and reputation on the line. And then we watch helplessly while anonymous commenters hijack threads and launch screed upon hateful screed in every direction.
President Hamid Karzai's last minute agreement to hold a second round of presidential elections on November 7 could be nothing more than a cynical ploy. The notion that the international community can work with domestic monitors to effectively prepare for such elections in the next 16 days, and that this run-off will produce a credible victor, is questionable.
"It would be better if the administration focused on the regime's instability and ignored the nukes. This ought to be the goal of the "crippling" sanctions the Obama administration has threatened. Sanctions will not persuade the present Iranian government to give up its nuclear weapons program....But the right kinds of sanctions could help the Iranian opposition topple these still-vulnerable rulers."
--Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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--Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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"9/11 changed everything." It's a common trope, but it is not clear that our personal and social lives were significantly transformed by September 11.
This may be a sign, among other things, of human stubbornness, or indifference, or perhaps our ability to recover.
This may be a sign, among other things, of human stubbornness, or indifference, or perhaps our ability to recover.
Critics of a New Jersey mosque's plans to hold a prayer event on the National Mall are wrong in their views of religious liberty.
The Star-Ledger reported last week that a mosque in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dar-ul-Islam, will spearhead a national prayer gathering for September 25 in Washington, D.C., "that organizers are billing as the first event of its kind--organized prayer for tens of thousands of Muslims outside the U.S. Capitol building."
The Star-Ledger reported last week that a mosque in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dar-ul-Islam, will spearhead a national prayer gathering for September 25 in Washington, D.C., "that organizers are billing as the first event of its kind--organized prayer for tens of thousands of Muslims outside the U.S. Capitol building."
By the end of 2009 the U.S. will have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, 21,000 of whom were deployed by the Obama administration.
This factoid must be considered against the backdrop of the presidential election held last week. According to Grant Kippen, the Canadian chairman of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission, electoral fraud may be sufficiently serious to affect the outcome of the poll. With presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah accusing President Hamid Karzai of "stealing" the...
This factoid must be considered against the backdrop of the presidential election held last week. According to Grant Kippen, the Canadian chairman of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission, electoral fraud may be sufficiently serious to affect the outcome of the poll. With presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah accusing President Hamid Karzai of "stealing" the...
According to the constitution, everything in the country is determined by people's vote. People elect the members of the Assembly of Experts and then they elect the leader... Presidents, MPs, members of the councils are elected by direct votes....The title of Islamic Republic is not...a formality. It includes both the republican and Islamic nature.
-- Hashemi Rasfanjani, July 17, 2009
Friday July 17 may turn out to be one of the most fateful days in the history of the Islamic Republic of...
-- Hashemi Rasfanjani, July 17, 2009
Friday July 17 may turn out to be one of the most fateful days in the history of the Islamic Republic of...
I've argued strongly for engagement with Iran as a game-changer. America renewed relations with the Soviet Union at the time of the Great Terror and China at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Operation Jackboot has not, as yet at least, involved mass killings. But the Iran of today is not the Iran of three weeks ago... Its Robespierres are running amok. Obama must do nothing to suggest business as usual. Let Ahmadinejad...writhe in the turbid puddle of his self-proclaimed "justice" and...
If there is one thing successful revolutionaries hate, it's a mass movement. The "people" are a useful device for seizing power. Elements of the populace--bused in at the state's expense! --can be stage-managed to reinforce the message that the Leader is in charge. But under no circumstances can they take to the streets en masse to speak for themselves. This would run counter to law and order. Revolutionaries just love order.
This logic goes hand in hand with a brutal contempt for the masses...
This logic goes hand in hand with a brutal contempt for the masses...
The Islamic Republic of Iran is dying a sad, angry death. In its place, we will probably get what one cleric has called the "Islamic Government" of Iran.
The difference is not merely semantic. The genius of the Islamic Republic -if we may call it that -- was that it blended competing notions of legitimacy, as well as a myriad of competing institutions. Unelected authorities, the most important of whom was the Leader, co-existed with quasi-democratic bodies such as the parliament (majles) and...
The difference is not merely semantic. The genius of the Islamic Republic -if we may call it that -- was that it blended competing notions of legitimacy, as well as a myriad of competing institutions. Unelected authorities, the most important of whom was the Leader, co-existed with quasi-democratic bodies such as the parliament (majles) and...
We often bemoan the fact that we Americans have, to put it charitably, large gaps in our understanding of Islam as a religion and of the endlessly complex Muslim world.
Ignorance contributes to the global tensions that some call the "clash of civilizations". It makes it harder to deal with the day-to-day challenges of international interactions as well as with conflicts and hot spots. After 9/11 there was a blizzard of talks, books, and articles, the most intensive public education effort in...
Ignorance contributes to the global tensions that some call the "clash of civilizations". It makes it harder to deal with the day-to-day challenges of international interactions as well as with conflicts and hot spots. After 9/11 there was a blizzard of talks, books, and articles, the most intensive public education effort in...
Faith Complex is hosted by Jacques Berlinerblau, produced by Thomas Banchoff, and presented by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University.
If I seem a bit amped up during my interview with Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, then please chalk this up not only to the man's infectious intellectual energy, but to the excitement generated by his breathtakingly bold and erudite book Islam and the Secular State:...
If I seem a bit amped up during my interview with Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, then please chalk this up not only to the man's infectious intellectual energy, but to the excitement generated by his breathtakingly bold and erudite book Islam and the Secular State:...
It will not be enough for...Obama to...say... that he understands... and sympathizes with [Muslims], as they too are the victims of the terrorism of extremists...Most Muslims will listen carefully to what he will say on June 4, and they are expecting clear steps for a radical solution to the Palestinian issue, as a fundamental key to restoring trust in the United States.
--Raghida Dergham
Candor requires acknowledging that too many Arab states have exploited the Arab-Israeli conflict for...
--Raghida Dergham
Candor requires acknowledging that too many Arab states have exploited the Arab-Israeli conflict for...
The recent flare-up over whether American soldiers should be free to distribute bibles in Afghanistan highlights a simmering debate that comes to a boil every once in a while. It's not about whether people should be free to practice their faith, but how and when they should be free to share it. This knotty issue comes pretty high on the agenda for the new President's Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships Council which is shaping the new administration's approaches to public funding for...
Today marks the launch of Faith Complex--a show about the collision of religion, politics and art. Faith Complex is a joint production of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and Program for Jewish Civilization. We are delighted to be teaming up again with our old ale-house cronies at the Washington Post "On Faith" page.
Today we invite you to view Part I of our interview with Asra Nomani, entitled "A Bad Girl of Islam." This is the prelude to Part II,...
Today we invite you to view Part I of our interview with Asra Nomani, entitled "A Bad Girl of Islam." This is the prelude to Part II,...
Q: There are a lot of Muslims who look at the leadership of Egypt warily...Is...this is a bad selection (for President Obama's speech to the Muslim world)?
Press Secretary GIBBS: (Egypt)...is the heart of Arab world...This is a speech to many, many people and a continuing effort by this President ...to demonstrate how we can work together to ensure the safety and security and the future well-being....of the Muslim world.
Q: I guess my only point is there are a lot of Muslims who think of......
Press Secretary GIBBS: (Egypt)...is the heart of Arab world...This is a speech to many, many people and a continuing effort by this President ...to demonstrate how we can work together to ensure the safety and security and the future well-being....of the Muslim world.
Q: I guess my only point is there are a lot of Muslims who think of......
First Prize for Best Concluding Lines in a Middle East Policy Article goes to Fouad Ajami. In a clever observation about Syria's current leader, he writes:
"Assad has not been brilliant in the way he has handled the inheritance his father bequeathed to him, but the Assad dynasty and the intelligence barons and the brigade commanders who sustain the regime can be relied on to fight for what they usurped. After all, they stole it fair and square."
"Assad has not been brilliant in the way he has handled the inheritance his father bequeathed to him, but the Assad dynasty and the intelligence barons and the brigade commanders who sustain the regime can be relied on to fight for what they usurped. After all, they stole it fair and square."
"We remind Hosni Mubarak that we are all Egyptians. Where does he want us to go?" Gergis Faris, a 46-year-old pig farmer in Cairo who collects garbage to feed his animals, told the Associated Press. "We are uneducated people, just living day by day... and now if our pigs are taken from us without compensation, how are we supposed to live?"
In the past two days Egyptian authorities have slaughtered some 300,000 pigs. Never mind that health officials from Atlanta to Melbourne have asserted...
In the past two days Egyptian authorities have slaughtered some 300,000 pigs. Never mind that health officials from Atlanta to Melbourne have asserted...
The video shows the brutal beating of a young girl, well covered in her burka and red trousers, screaming and struggling as she is held down by a man and a woman. The scene symbolizes the tensions tearing Pakistan apart and it raises a host of questions. Is this what Sharia law is about? What does this primitive justice by bearded Taliban leaders portend for Pakistan? For south Asia? What's caused the Swat Valley, a region celebrated for peace, civility, and beauty, to change so rapidly? And...
Yesterday, someone called on the Egyptian people to take to the streets...This person also called on the Egyptian Armed Forces...The Egyptian Armed Forces are there to defend Egypt. If need be, they will also protect Egypt against people like you.
-- Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Gheit December 29, 2008.
Abu al-Gheit issued the above warning to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, as Israel was pounding Gaza. Assailing Egypt's effort to stem the flow of weapons to Hamas, ...
-- Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Gheit December 29, 2008.
Abu al-Gheit issued the above warning to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, as Israel was pounding Gaza. Assailing Egypt's effort to stem the flow of weapons to Hamas, ...
President Obama heralded an encouraging new tone when he told Turkey's Parliament on Monday that the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam...America's relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot and will not just be based upon opposition to terrorism...We seek broader engagement based upon mutual interest and mutual respect."
We Turks have lately been thinking only in opposites -- that you are either secular or religious, Kurd or Turk, European or Middle Eastern. It took a young foreign leader...to remind us that we are all of those things, and much more.
-- Asli Aydintasbas, former Ankara bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.
As far as I am concerned, the high point of Obama's first overseas trip as President was his visit to Turkey. There he encountered a land whose leaders are struggling to reconcile contending...
-- Asli Aydintasbas, former Ankara bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.
As far as I am concerned, the high point of Obama's first overseas trip as President was his visit to Turkey. There he encountered a land whose leaders are struggling to reconcile contending...
Iraqi officials...are courteously telling...visiting Arab officials...that Iraq has "special relations with Iran," but that these ties should not compromise Iraq's commitment to being a crucial Arab player...For purposes of confrontation and for those of dialogue, Iraq will remain the key scene of Arab --and possibly America --encounters with Iran.
--Dina Ezzat, "Standing by Iraq." Al-Ahram Weekly.
One of the Obama administration's manifold Middle East challenges is how Iraq will reintegrate...
--Dina Ezzat, "Standing by Iraq." Al-Ahram Weekly.
One of the Obama administration's manifold Middle East challenges is how Iraq will reintegrate...
At Midnight on March 20, 2009, the Barack Obama administration launched into diplomatic orbit the USS Engagement. Using the occasion of the Persian New Year (Nowruz), the president invoked a spring of "new beginnings" to set out the enticing possibility of a normal relationship between Iran and the U.S.
Whether this turns out to be a historic moment, or yet another failed bid to move beyond a three-decade cold war, remains to be seen. It will take a huge dose of sustained political will in...
Whether this turns out to be a historic moment, or yet another failed bid to move beyond a three-decade cold war, remains to be seen. It will take a huge dose of sustained political will in...
A. "Mr Sharif has a long history of...pretending to be principled," said the spokesman. "As someone who ordered his party supporters to storm the Supreme Court in 1998, his claims to fight for judicial independence sound so hollow."
B. "Mr. Zardari...is destabilizing the nation," said Mushahid Hussain, a...former aide to Sharif. "Just a year ago, we believed it was the dawn of a new democratic era, but our leaders seem to be back in the old mind-set of tearing each other apart."
B. "Mr. Zardari...is destabilizing the nation," said Mushahid Hussain, a...former aide to Sharif. "Just a year ago, we believed it was the dawn of a new democratic era, but our leaders seem to be back in the old mind-set of tearing each other apart."
Anti-Semitism is... becoming part of the political ideology... If you dehumanize a group of people -- and the Islamists dehumanize the Jews -- even if they don't say they want to kill them, the dehumanization is... a crime. -- Bassam Tibi
A Syrian-born German scholar and leading expert on Islamist ideology, Bassam Tibi doesn't mice words. For the sad reality is that many Islamist leaders today espouse a version of Jew hatred that is as odious as any other prejudice.
A Syrian-born German scholar and leading expert on Islamist ideology, Bassam Tibi doesn't mice words. For the sad reality is that many Islamist leaders today espouse a version of Jew hatred that is as odious as any other prejudice.
Rana Jad is a 20-year-old student at Dar al-Hikma Women's College . . . "Girls don't feel very comfortable when males are selling them lingerie, telling them what size is for them . . . He's totally checking the girls out! It's just not appropriate, especially here in our culture."
That's an excerpt from a BBC story about Dr. Reem Asaad, a finance professor who recently launched an Internet campaign to have Saudi Arabia's lingerie shops staffed by women. Taking a solidly business-like...
That's an excerpt from a BBC story about Dr. Reem Asaad, a finance professor who recently launched an Internet campaign to have Saudi Arabia's lingerie shops staffed by women. Taking a solidly business-like...
The Taliban: Coming to a Phone Near You?
To understand the escalating threat posed by the Taliban to Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Queens, New York, take a look at the Feb. 17 edition of the New York Times.
Story Number 1 is "Taliban Commander's Death Ends An Embarrassment for Afghanistan." In this piece, we learn that Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir--a Taliban commander who organized the November 2008 ambush of an Afghan Army convoy-- was recently killed in an air attack organized by the American...
To understand the escalating threat posed by the Taliban to Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Queens, New York, take a look at the Feb. 17 edition of the New York Times.
Story Number 1 is "Taliban Commander's Death Ends An Embarrassment for Afghanistan." In this piece, we learn that Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir--a Taliban commander who organized the November 2008 ambush of an Afghan Army convoy-- was recently killed in an air attack organized by the American...
Depending on who you listen to, the Common Word is an extraordinary opportunity, a watershed event that promises to counter threats of a "clash of civilizations," or yet another interfaith dialogue in which narrow groups argue about the meaning of life and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
We appreciate the...opinions of reformists, like Khatami, and their liberal spirit that allows for realistic communication on all issues...The reformative Islamists [like Khatami] are the best option. However it will not satisfy us much even if they do attain power at the forthcoming spring elections, because they are a wingless dove. Whether or not an agreement is to be reached, it must be reached with the true people in power. -- Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), February...
I...do not accept Islamic human rights. If we accept that the Muslims can write an Islamic human rights declaration...from now on, we will see Buddhist human rights declarations...Jewish human rights declarations and so on and so forth...And if the standards are abolished... the weaker people...will be the ones who will suffer.
-- Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Human Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate
As the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution approaches, it is refreshing to hear Shirin...
-- Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Human Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate
As the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution approaches, it is refreshing to hear Shirin...
The irony now is obvious: George W. Bush as a force for emancipation in Muslim lands, and Barack Hussein Obama as a messenger of the old, settled ways. Thus the "parochial" man takes abroad a message that Muslims and Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA, and the man with Muslim and Kenyan and Indonesian fragments in his very life and identity is signaling an acceptance of the established order.
--Fouad Ajami commenting on President Barck Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya TV
In the wake...
--Fouad Ajami commenting on President Barck Obama's interview with Al-Arabiya TV
In the wake...
Outside Siedlce a German plane appeared... and we threw ourselves into an adjacent potato field, face down...I heard the bullets whistling over my head and...turning on my side, I saw a solider aiming his rifle at the airplane...It was a bizarre sight.
In his memoirs, my father recounts his and my grandparents' harrowing escape from Poland following the Nazi invasion on September 1, 1939. In the following days, they would see other bizarre and terrible sights, not least of which was a man...
In his memoirs, my father recounts his and my grandparents' harrowing escape from Poland following the Nazi invasion on September 1, 1939. In the following days, they would see other bizarre and terrible sights, not least of which was a man...
Washington is still basking in the euphoria of the inaugural week. It's one of those times engraved on memories, young and old: "Where were you when Barack Obama was sworn in?" There are millions of stories, Facebook photos, emails of congratulations from every corner of the world.
It's cool to be an American again...From Jakarta to Johannesburg; Americans who travel or live abroad are being hugged when strangers hear their accent.
--Washington Post, January 16, 2009
Having just returned from a trip to Syria and Saudi Arabia, let me just say that one place it is not automatically "cool" to be an American is in the Arab world. In discussions with government officials, journalists, intellectuals and businessmen, I heard a dangerous combination of anger, despair and...
--Washington Post, January 16, 2009
Having just returned from a trip to Syria and Saudi Arabia, let me just say that one place it is not automatically "cool" to be an American is in the Arab world. In discussions with government officials, journalists, intellectuals and businessmen, I heard a dangerous combination of anger, despair and...
"(Israel's)... acts made me reflect on some of the commandments given by God to the 'Chosen People': Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. No one could be chosen by God to annex the land of other people and kill them."
Among the many statements I have read regarding the tragic situation in Gaza the above caught my attention. Penned by a Palestinian professor of American literature, it reminds us of two facts:
Among the many statements I have read regarding the tragic situation in Gaza the above caught my attention. Penned by a Palestinian professor of American literature, it reminds us of two facts:
Every other year I fly to Oklahoma to spend Christmas with my in-laws. In their small rural town, where churches and barbeque are plentiful, I ponder the interplay of different religious holidays. Hanukkah celebrates a purported miracle that occurred in 165 BCE, when Jewish rebels revolted against Hellenistic idolatry, while Christmas marks the wondrous birth -some 160 years later-- of a charismatic rabbi whose disciples founded a new religion. Totally unrelated, these two holidays - some...
A {New York} transit rider...was dragged out of a public meeting by police who feared he was about to imitate the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush..."This shoe's for you," he shouted as he was hustled out. New York Times, December 18, 2008.
My Hanukkah Memo to President Elect Barack Obama:
Dear President-elect Obama,
Every Washington think-tank has its foreign policy wish list. We'll do our part at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on January 8, when we hold our "Passing the Baton" event. Still, I want to say something directly to you, something that is both a bit personal and wonkish.
Dear President-elect Obama,
Every Washington think-tank has its foreign policy wish list. We'll do our part at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on January 8, when we hold our "Passing the Baton" event. Still, I want to say something directly to you, something that is both a bit personal and wonkish.
Whose heart was not broken by the image of two-year-old Moshe Holtzberg crying for his parents, both of whom were murdered last week in Mumbai's Jewish Center? The world weeps with this innocent child, and for all of those whose lives were lost or torn apart in last week's carnage.
The Mumbai tragedy brings with it two sad lessons, not merely for South Asia, but for the entire world.
The Mumbai tragedy brings with it two sad lessons, not merely for South Asia, but for the entire world.
Diana Eck, Harvard scholar, has documented the stunning religious change that America is experiencing. I glimpsed a piece of it last Saturday night.
Next week's election has me thinking about democracy both at home and abroad. How, I wonder, can the U.S. promote political reform overseas unless it puts its own house in order? One of our chief problems is widespread political apathy, a long-standing ailment compounded by a congressional redistricting system that encourages political disengagement. Yes indeed, people are "free" to vote or stay at home. But their choices are shaped by the perception that voting does (or does not) advance...
Last week came the big test: our son entered school and promptly - even enthusiastically - put on his brightly colored Central Asian kippah. I was relieved, but also a little worried, since it seemed he was motivated by fact that all the other boys were doing the same thing. Is this the slippery slope to faith by osmosis? And if it is, so what? After all, what else can religion be for a four-year-old? We certainly don't expect him to pose critical questions at this stage - maybe soon, but not...
Turkey's Constitutional Court has decided against disbanding the Justice and Development Party (AKP), and ruled instead to cut the party's public funding. This sent a clear signal that the AKP is now on probation, and may yet be shut down if it pursues what ardent secularists view as a policy of creeping Islamization.
Global warming makes strange bedfellows.
That’s the basic explanation of why Richard Cizik, a prominent evangelical pastor, could be found for two days last month closeted at the World Bank and on Capitol Hill with a group of other evangelicals and a delegation of Moroccan Muslims, led by their ambassador to the U.S., Aziz Mekouar.
This is the first of two stories I will tell in the coming weeks about Muslim headscarves. Both illustrate the sometimes paranoid reactions that religious dress often elicits; they also highlight how the political meaning of headscarves shifts in different political and cultural contexts.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) holds its principal, and best known, meeting at Davos each January but regional meetings in different parts of the world are taking on increasing importance. The annual Middle East meeting, which has for the past few years alternated between the Dead Sea complex in Jordan and Sharm El Sheikh, in Egypt, took place this year at Sharm El Sheikh, from May 18-20. As part of this large gathering (some 1300 participants plus staff), a series of private meetings about...
The World Economic Forum on the Middle East at Sharm El Sheikh reeks of solemnity. There is a sense that the people who attend this annual business-driven meeting carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. With speeches by three heads of state (Presidents Hosni Mubarak and George W. Bush and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) at the opening event Sunday, with 1,500 world leaders from many different sectors, the gravity of the issues at hand seemed overwhelming.
"What do the American people think of Ayatollah Khomeini?â an Iranian TV reporter asked me on my first visit to Tehran in 1999. For a moment I was stumped. If I answered truthfully, I would have to say that the vast majority of Americans had never heard of Khomeini. But Iranian hardliners might easily exploit this observation. And so I simply suggested that most Americans didnât follow international politicsâ”this was the task of a foreign policy elite whose opinions on Iran were as...
Music is a well known path for crossing wide cultural divides. Music speaks without words. It can epitomize a mood as well as a culture. And it can stir up emotions and preconceptions. There's a fascinating venture afoot in Fes, Morocco, to use those very qualities to bridge divides between the Muslim world and western cultures and faiths. The idea is that people can, through their love of music, explore new realms and appreciate the world's wonderful diversity. But even more, the hope is...
Varities of anti-religious imagination
April 30, 2008
Ates Altinordu writes on the Immanent Frame: The publication of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age has fostered an exceptionally vibrant intellectual debate on secularism and on the conditions of belief under modernity, as the readers of this blog very well know. For the social sciences at least, this fundamental rethinking on secularism inspired by Taylor’s work could not be any timelier: the stand-off between classical secularization theorists and the proponents of the religious...
In recent weeks I have given a lot of thought to the flap over Barack Obama's assertion that economic frustration inclines people to 'cling to guns or religion'. Beyond the domestic debate, the hullabaloo provoked by the Senator's remarks offers a useful point of departure to probe the complex motivations that animate Islamist movements and ideologies.
That the 2008 campaign is drawing attention to the declining fortunes of American secularism is a point I have been making in these columns and elsewhere. It is with similar concern that I call attention to an overlapping (and under-discussed) trend that is coming into sharper focus this election season: the ongoing collapse of the distinction between the public and private sphere.
Avoid religion and politics at the dinner table -- so goes the conventional wisdom. Tempers will flare and appetites curdle with the passions that both topics so often arouse. But in reality we need to get the kind of dinner-table discussions going that can help overcome some deep and poorly understood prejudices about religion in American life.
Last week, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Shi'ite militants in the port city of Basra to surrender their weapons. When they called his bluff, he extended the offer by a full week, underscoring the great risk that Maliki had undertaken in pursuing a military solution to the conflict with the fiery cleric Muqtada Sadr and his 'Mahdi Army'. In today's Iraq, political clout ultimately flows from the barrel of many guns. Thus Sadr's thousands of loyal followers...
Although I had initially conjured up the idea only to reject it as undemocratic, perhaps it is high time that we as a nation, believers and nonbelievers alike, consider the establishment of the 28th Amendment. Its majestic words would read as follows:
Section 1. The right of presidential aspirants to discuss religion, invoke sacred texts, or mention God on the campaign trail is hereby repealed Section 2. Whenever a religious figure endorses any candidate for the presidency that candidate must...
Some years back my wife and I befriended three Moroccan brothers who had been summarily locked up for 10 years by the late king of Morocco. Tossed into a cell with little light and a ceiling so low that one of the brothers developed a hunched back, they were only released after a human rights campaign in France secured their freedom. One brother finally came to America, where he settled down in a small town in Texas. There he wrote his memoirs and discovered a kind of happiness, surrounded by...
Where are the passionate moderates in Islam, Madeleine Albright wanted to know. Why does all the passion seem to come from extremists? The former secretary of State was speaking at the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, sponsored by the Brookings Institution. To the Islamic world, her message was that what we need now is “moderates on the march, moderates with swagger.”
Recently I agreed to become a regular contributor to washingtonpost.com's provocative blog on religion and politics: 'On Faith'. My mission: to elucidate the intricate mysteries of Islamist politics. Something about my reputation for scholarly honesty and objectivity-- I was told--bolstered by my work with Arab democratic activists, suggested that I could make a compelling addition to the On Faith team! Who was I to argue?
From videos left behind by suicide bombers to movies like Syriana, Americans have become quite familiar with radicalized Muslim youth. But last week, a remarkable Egyptian evangelist, whose influence reaches across much of the Muslim world, offered a different vision: young Muslims driven by both hope and faith. At the U.S.-Islamic World Forum that just wrapped up in Doha, Amr Khaled was everywhere with his message that faith is a powerful force and motivator for young people in the Middle...
As I ventured into the hotel lobby in Jeddah earlier this week, I was not thinking about the role of women in Islam, but the issue came abruptly into the picture. In my terms I felt pretty well covered in a mid-calf dark red suit with long sleeves, but I was quickly conscious of disapproving stares from two hotel porters. One asked me what I was looking for in a way that made it clear I did not belong there. I knew that women in Saudi Arabia are required to wear the long black robes known as...
The missing all
December 12, 2007
John Lardas Modern writes on the Immanent Frame: Despite the perfectly pitched limitations of its dust jacket, Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age possesses a definitive look about it—solid, dark, foreboding even, with imprints of gold and the Belknap Press.
The first two publications of Belknap Press were the Harvard Guide to American History (1954) and The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955). And as it website assures us, Belknap, modeled after the Clarendon imprint of Oxford University...
The concludes with a striking ceremony where religious leaders sit on a platform grouped by religion, in ceremonial garb. The colors are vivid, crimson, white, black, and saffron. The symbolism is also vivid, as they light candles together for peace. This year's visual pageant showed some of the complexities of encouraging dialog among very different kinds of religions and religious organizations. The Catholic hierarchy was marked by differing colors and robes. The ranks of Orthodox recalled...
The scope and uses of secularity
November 19, 2007
John Bowen writes on the Immanent Frame: Charles Taylor’s remarkable account of developments within Latin Christendom situates contemporary religious or non-religious commitments within what he calls the “immanent frame,” the key to which is the secular condition (his third meaning of secularity), in which belief is an option, and religion a distinct domain. Early in his study, he remarks that such is not the case everywhere: in Muslim societies generally, and for people in...
Secularism, hegemony, and fullness
November 17, 2007
Talal Asad writes on the Immanent Frame: Let me begin with Saba Mahmood’s paper, which I think is important, and talk about the idea of the “normative impetus internal to secularism,” as she puts it. Instead of seeing secularism as the solution to entrenched religious conflicts, instead of focusing on the notion of religious neutrality, say, she wants, in this paper and elsewhere in her work, to look at the way in which secularism informs foreign policy.
Human rights in a secular age?
November 16, 2007
M. Christian Green and John Witte, Jr. write on the Immanent Frame: Certain observations regarding Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age made in previous posts can only be echoed—the book’s magisterial sweep, the masterful command of history, the penetrating questions about the human condition with respect to both religion and no fewer than three forms of secularity. Taylor’s recounting of the rise of the “disciplinary society,” “the buffered self,”...
Query: Can an atheist or agnostic commentator discuss any aspect of religion for more than thirty seconds without referring to religious people as imbeciles, extremists, mental deficients, fascists, enemies of the common good, crypto-Nazis, conjure men, irrationalists, pedophiles, bearers of false consciousness, authoritarian despots, and so forth? Is that possible?
I participated in an inaugural event in Fes, Morocco earlier this week, focused on Sufism and Human Development. Faouzi Skali, creator and founder of the Fes Festival and Forum, is the leader and inspirer. The Festival/Forum attracted much attention, despite its newness and quite recent planning - attention from media (Moroccan and foreign), attendees from several continents, and considerable engagement from different Moroccan social and political currents .
The Executive Group of the Council of 100 met as part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos; the C100, briefly, is a WEF initiative (rather atypical among WEF activities) that aims to further dialogue and understanding between "the Islamic World" and "the West". At present the group includes some 86 people, and the intent is that they be drawn from both the Islamic world and western societies, and from five major sectors: business, politics, religion, media, and civil society....
I was in New York September 19-21 for various missions, primarily to serve as moderator for a day-long launch meeting for a High Level interfaith Forum within the United Nations system. This note reports briefly on that meeting and its conclusions, with some background as the effort may not be widely known to you and other Bank colleagues. I will report separately, to those most directly concerned, on other New York meetings, which included inter alia a presentation for the UN Ethics Office...
Awraham Soetendorp is a household name in the Netherlands so an English language symposium to celebrate his life and mark his formal retirement as rabbi of a Reform Jewish congregation in the Hague last month was quickly over-subscribed. Those lucky enough to attend were in for an eclectic treat: wise words, history, politics, provocative suggestions, music, and theology all woven together with good humor. It was a well timed reminder, at a time when Dutch politics are often tense and...