Condoleezza Rice and the road to nowhere…aka Jerusalam
Rice seeks Mid-East breakthrough
It is crunch time for the Bush administration as it continues to hold out hope for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
But even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice let out a sign of her frustration at the lack of progress on the ground, particularly on the part of [...]
Once, I laughed at Sufis
A perennial feature of classical Sufi manuals like Imam Al Qushayri’s Principles of Sufism or Imam al-Jilani’s The Secret of Secrets is the sheer number of anecdotes they quote. I remember trying to read these books many years ago and coming away with a vague sense of disbelief. Sufis taming lions in the wilderness; Sufis [...]
Politics fuels despair
Politics Fuels Despair, Resentment The most fundamental problem in U.S.-Muslim world relations today is our inability to view current events through the prism of historical, socio-political, and-economic conditions in the region, such as the history of colonialism or the reality of authoritarianism in the Middle East.
When it comes to the Muslim world, there is a dogged [...]
Islam vs Science?
Are Muslim beliefs compatible with critical inquiry? Almost every standard world history textbook celebrates Islam’s golden age of science. Between the ninth and 13th centuries, Muslim scholars not only translated the great works of Greek medicine, mathematics, and science but also pushed the frontiers of discovery in all of those areas. They improved and named algebra, [...]
Urban myths that bear repeating
Urban myths are folklore that are thought to be true by those circulating them. These myths are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized. An effective urban myth is designed to provoke an emotional response from the audience, instead of an intellectual one.
Take for example, this urban myth that has been [...]
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