Category Archives: Islam and Christianity

Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Israel, Terrorism Issue


Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail.

by Erik Ose, The Latest Outrage, September 12, 2008

This week, 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states. The 60-minute DVDs, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” are landing on doorsteps in a campaign coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York-based group called the Clarion Fund, a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers. Continue reading Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States →

Can the Umm al Qura calendar serve as a global Islamic calendar?

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamic Rituals, Islamic Sciences, Saudi Arabia

by Khalid Chraibi

Over the past 50 years, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and other similar bodies presented their member States with over a half-dozen proposals aiming at the establishment of a common Islamic calendar. Although none of these proposals was adopted, efforts in search of a solution that could be satisfactory to all interested parties continue to this day. For its part, the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) was also regularly confronted with the responsibility of telling its Muslim American audience when to start fasting, when to celebrate «eid al-Fitr», «eid al-Adha», etc. After several years of study of the legal issues involved, it reached a decision, which it announced in August 2006, to use henceforth a pre-calculated Islamic calendar, taking into consideration the sightability of the new moon anywhere on Earth. (1)

First, it retains the well-known principle of unicity of horizons (matâli’) which states that it is sufficient to observe the new moon anywhere on Earth, in order to declare the beginning of a new lunar month, applicable in all areas in which the information is received. Second, it uses the International date line (IDL) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as its conventional point of reference to conduct its analysis. Continue reading Can the Umm al Qura calendar serve as a global Islamic calendar? →

Move Over, You Tube

Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, YouTube Watch

You Tube boasts one of the largest audiences on the web. There are plenty of videos put up by Muslims and many of these are in languages other than English. On July 11 there were 643,000 hits for the search “Islam” on You Tube. But move over, You Tube, and make room for Islamic tube, which has carefully selected videos on Islamic themes. You can find Quranic recitation, debates, numerous sermons and lectures and some rather raw anti-Zionist (and decidedly anti-Semitic) diatribes. This is a significant resource, but like all websites, should be consulted with caution.

Making “Medieval” Islam Meaningful

Islam and Christianity, Islamic History, Orientalism

[The following is an excerpt from a recently published article in Medieval Encounters 13(3):385-412, 2007.]

In many disciplines, scholars would not dream of taking their terminology from the street. Even if they do not fully succeed in agreeing upon a given set of terms, they recognize that it is essential for each writer to use his terms with precision, and that an attempt to accommodate oneself to popular usage as reflected in a dictionary must be disastrous. Too often, historians (especially in the field of Islamics) still try to avoid recognizing such a necessity and are satisfied to be guided by whatever is ‘common practice.’ (Marshall Hodgson)

Marshall Hodgson, perhaps more than any other historian of the Middle East, knew that the venture of Islam was all the more difficult to describe due to the adventure in trying to escape the strictures of loaded terms. His neologistics, advocating the use of “Islamicate” to distinguish the cultural from the religious dimensions of a regional history, failed to gain a consensus, although his seminal three-volume study of Islamic history remains a valuable resource three decades later. In the current postmodern climate a number of outdated and outsized terms have fallen into disuse among historians. “Muhammadanism,” by the 1960s, and “Orientalism,” since the 1970s, cease to carry weight after being dressed down for their ethnocentric cultural baggage. “Middle East,” moreso than its linguistic sibling rival “Near East,” continues to float across disciplines and the media, in part because Southwest Asia inspires little interest outside geography. But there is still at least one more label that we could all do without.

To be blunt, I suggest that continued use of the term “medieval” in reference to Middle Eastern and Islamic history between the 7th and the 15 centuries, anno dominated, is anachronistic, misleading and disorienting. Continue reading Making “Medieval” Islam Meaningful →

Nadwi on Maududi: a traditionalist maulvi’s critique of Islamism

India, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Texts, Terrorism Issue


Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (1903-1979)

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net, May 18, 2008

The late Sayyed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (or Ali Miyan as he was also known) was one of the leading Indian ulema of modern times. A noted writer, he headed the famous Nadwat ul-Ulema madrasa in Lucknow from 1961 till his death in 1999. He was associated with several other Indian as well as international Islamic organisations, a mark of the high respect that he was accorded among Muslims all over the world.

Maulana Nadwi’s wrote extensively on a vast range of subjects, including on Islam and politics. On this issue, his views underwent a gradual process of change and maturation, beginning with his early association with a leading Indian Islamist formation and later making a forceful critique of some crucial aspects of its understanding of Islam. His views in this regard point to the little-known yet rich internal debate among Indian Muslim scholars about the relationship between Islam and politics, particularly on the question of what Islamists describe as an ‘Islamic state’.

In 1940, Maulana Nadwi came under the influence of Sayyid Maududi, the founder of the principal Indian Islamist outfit, the Jamaat-i Islami. Maududi, along with the Egyptian Syed Qutb, may be said to be among the pioneers of contemporary Islamism. Soon after joining the Jamaat, Maulana Nadwi was put in-charge of its activities in Lucknow. This relationship proved short-lived, however, and he left the Jamaat in 1943. He later wrote that he was disillusioned by the perception that many members of the Jamaat were going to what he called ‘extremes’ in adoring and glorifying Maududi as almost infallible, this bordering on ‘personality worship’. At the same time, he felt that many Jamaat activists believed that they had nothing at all to learn from any other scholars of Islam. He was also concerned with what he saw as a lack of personal piety in Maududi and some leading Jamaat activists and with their criticism of other Muslim groups. Continue reading Nadwi on Maududi: a traditionalist maulvi’s critique of Islamism →

Marranci on the Anthropology of Islam

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Note: The following is an excerpt from Gabriele Marranci’s latest book, The Anthropology of Islam (Oxford: Berg, 2008), which is well worth reading for insights on previous ethnographic study of Islam and guidelines for current research.

Books and ‘how-to’ guides about anthropological fieldwork are increasing in number within publishers’ catalogues. Among this large production, it is unusual to find even even chapters addressing the experience of conducting fieldwork among Muslim societies and communities. In the few cases in which some examples have been provided, they describe and discuss what I call ‘exotic’ fieldwork. Even less available is material containing reflections on the impact and issues that an anthropologist may face in conducting fieldwork within Muslim communities, in the west and in Islamic countries, during this endless ‘war on terror’. In this chapter, I have tried to start a reflection and discussion on what it means to conduct fieldwork among Muslims today. In doing so, I have provided examples from the experience of some anthropologists as well as my own. I have suggested that at the centre of a contemporary anthropology of Islam should be the human being even before the Muslim. This is vital if we wish to overcome a certain Orientalism and suppression of self-represented identities, as we can observe in classic works, from Geertz to Rabinow and Gellner. Continue reading Marranci on the Anthropology of Islam →

Idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans, and Papists

Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic History, Islamophobia


The Ottoman army besieging Vienna (1529). Book Illustration, Nakkas Osman 1588.

The recent controversies over pastoral remarks that pit Christianity vs Islam, whether generated by Pope Benedict or McCain’s jeremiad-in-the-making over Rev. Parsley or Rev. Hagee’s hazardous raising of Hitler and the Holocaust to acts of divine retribution, are not unique. Interfaith harmony and ecumenical amenities have been the exception in a historical trajectory of damning the faith of the other in both monotheisms, not to mention how Judaism has been denigrated as well. An earlier reform-minded Protestant had reason to fear Muslim Ottoman Turks, who had invaded Christian dominions in Europe and who had attracted more than a fair share of converts. A little more than a decade after Ottoman army besieged Vienna, Martin Luther wrote a preface to a German translation of the Quran. In this he targets “idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans and Papists” as instruments of the Devil, the kind of religious intolerance that easily spills over into the secular arena as ethnic hate bating.

Here is Luther’s “Preface to Bibliander’s Edition of the Qur’an” (1543):

Many persons have authored small tracts describing the rites, beliefs, and customs of Jews of this day for the very purpose of more easily refuting their manifest lies and exposed errors and ravings. There is no doubt that, when pious minds bring the testimony of the prophets to bear on the delusions and blasphemies of those people, they are greatly confirmed in faith and in love for the truth of the gospel and are fired with a righteous hatred of the perversity of the Jewish teachings. Continue reading Idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans, and Papists →

Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2008, Iran, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Shi'a

For some partisans, no matter who is elected President to succeed George W. Bush, it will seem like the end of the world. We are in the apocalypse silly season once again. Take Tim LeHaye, the doctrinal inspiration of the WASP-friendly Left Behind book series (Jerry B. Jenkins provides the verbal inspiration in sci-fi style); he has been preaching the politics of biblical apocalypse for years. Indeed, since the apostle John allegedly first had his vision on the island of Patmos, the world has been teetering in the end times. This world is always going to hell; Jesus must be coming soon. Bible-belting believers and bible-belching evangelists constantly look to the heavens with rapturous delight for the mother of all shock-and-awe shows to begin. Up go the faithful in the twinkling of an eye and then it is open tribulation season on the Jews that will make the 20th century Nazi holocaust look like a sabbath picnic. Fortunately, most of the world’s Christians look at such a naive-ity scene with alarm. “Even so,” it might be said, “do not come Lord Jesus.”

Reverends Tim LeHaye, Pat Robertson and John Hagee are not the only mega-mouths who know deep down in their saved souls that they will not be left behind. Ironically, they share theologically-maddened space with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the shi’a-evangelical President of Iran. As noted in a New York Times article today by Nazila Fathi, the Iranian President’s “high father” is Imam Mahdi, the hidden 12th “twelver” Imam who occulted well over a millennium ago, but whose reappearance has been looked for year after year in popular imagination. Ahmadinejad, who loves to wear his religion on his sleeves, says that Imam Mahdi guides his day-to-day decisions as a president. In gratitude, Ahmadinejad has sponsored an institute to prepare Iran for the Imam’s immanent return. This would be like Bush asking his faith-based supporters to create a special office in Homeland Security on Eternal Security Risks to those Left Behind. Continue reading Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election →