I really have to stop reading the newspapers.Particularly on Sunday mornings, I feel like I wandered into a science fiction movie in which everyone but me is a space alien who took over a human body. The pod people are everywhere. They smile at me, they chat affably, they say “Good . . . . Continue Reading »
Samir Khalid Samir, S.J. has devoted half a century to Islamic studies, and the English translation of his 2002 interview book on Islam is a welcome reminder that the subject of Islam can elicit more than shrillness. As an introduction to the subject and as an antidote to anodyne apologies, 111 . . . . Continue Reading »
More than ten thousand Nigerians have lost their lives in communal unrest since 1999. One incident in Kaduna State alone claimed more than two thousand lives. And in the 2006 riots that erupted across the world over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Nigeria had more of its citizens . . . . Continue Reading »
God’s War: A New History of the Crusades by christopher tyerman belknap, 1,040 pages, $35 Not too many years ago, single-volume histories of the Crusades were a rarity. Bookstores were crowded with volumes on the Civil War or World War II, but there was little on medieval battles fought in . . . . Continue Reading »
Snow by Orhan Pamuk Knopf. 426 pp. $26. Two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk published an essay in the New York Review of Books (titled “The Anger of the Damned”) in which Pamuk, who is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize, tried . . . . Continue Reading »
Abdulaziz Sachedina is a man with a mission. He is determined to demonstrate that when it comes to the West’s relations with Islam, there need be no “clash of civilizations.” Properly understood, Islam is compatible with—indeed, is positively conducive to—democratic pluralism, . . . . Continue Reading »
On May 24, 1996, a group of Islamic terrorists announced that they had “slit the throats” of seven French Trappist monks whom they had kidnapped from the monastery of Tibherine in Algeria and held as hostages for two months. Prior to the kidnapping, the superior of the monastery, Father . . . . Continue Reading »
The protagonist of No Longer At Ease by the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe is a young man named Obi Okonkwo who has recently returned to Nigeria after taking a degree in English literature at Oxford University. Obi’s interview for a civil service position turns into a discussion about . . . . Continue Reading »
Democracy is still very much a minority phenomenon among the nations of the world, but it is hard to deny that there appears to be something like a democratic revolution afoot. According to Samuel Huntington of Harvard University (writing in The National Interest ), there have been three . . . . Continue Reading »
Books on Islam, we are told, are enjoying brisk sales. For reasons related to the imperialist past of those countries, intellectuals in England and France have generally paid more attention to Islam than have Americans. Apart from academic specialists, American interest in Islam has been limited . . . . Continue Reading »
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