I continue to be baffled by the persistence of religions, even when their effects on human beings and our world are nothing short of cataclysmic. In Muslim-majority nations, Islam has…
Religion
Mimouna: Moroccan Jews Trusting Their Muslim Neighbors
The vast majority of people in the Christian and Muslim world know very little, or nothing at all, about the history of the Jewish communities in the Muslim world. The…
How to Deal with ISIS
As the world awakens to the destruction of the ancient Mesopotamian cultural heritage and more killings of Christians by the Islamic State or ISIS, most people will just simply sigh…
Terrorism and the Failure of Patriotism
Many people are asking what, exactly, is causing Muslims to be behind so many acts of terror and whether something could be done to change the situation for the better….
Murderous Fictions
The terrorist massacres in Paris on January 7th, and now the complaints about the portrayal of Islam’s prophet Mohammed on the surviving cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, are…
Jesus Was Not Christian
Not long after I reviewed Reza Aslan’s work on Jesus, I came across Geza Vermes’s excellent study, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (2013), that shows how Jesus’ iconoclastic but…
The Impossible Dreams of a Moroccan Prince
A few years ago, I wrote a review/commentary on The Road from Morocco, a thrilling account by Wafa Faith Hallam, a young, modern Moroccan woman who leads a truly quixotic…
The New Fitna
According to official Muslim history, when the Prophet Mohammed died in 632, his followers quickly split into two main camps—those who wanted Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, the first boy to…
The Past and Future of Israel
The moment I heard about Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, I hastened to get a copy, then another one when I joyfully shared…
Whence the Koran?
Much of what Muslims believe is unique to the faith—such as Mohammed being the seal of prophets or besieged believers falling asleep for centuries in a cave—are ideas taken from…