On the Square Today

John Daniel Davidson reviews  Islam and the Arab Awakening :

Can a Muslim-majority country, freed from the strictures of dictatorship, bring forth and preserve a democracy that grants equal rights to minorities and women, protects free speech and political dissent, and does not insist on the imposition of Islamic law? Tariq Ramadan’s unwillingness to engage this question, in a book purportedly about the social and political future of the post-Arab Spring Middle East, denies a fundamental tension at the heart of Islam.

Also today, Filip Mazurczak defends Archbishop Oscar Romero :

On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot during the celebration of Mass by the death squadrons of El Salvador’s military government. Today his reputation is undergoing a second assassination: Critics have responded to the floating of his name for beatification by wrongly charging the man with supporting violence, communism, and heresy. Those who would make the archbishop a radical hero have offered their own version of these claims in approving tones. Both are wrong.