What light does the experience of Salafi Muslim women shed on satire mocking Islam and Muslims? New Directions in the Study of Prayer grantee Z. Fareen Parvez takes up this question in her recent article on the place of female Muslim piety in contemporary France.
Latest posts
Politics of Religious Freedom
by The EditorsIn a just-published edited volume, Politics of Religious Freedom, editors Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba Mahmood, and Peter Danchin ask contributors: what is religious freedom, why is it being promoted, and how are we talking about it?
The public voice of Muslim women
by Sindre BangstadIn an essay here back in 2011, I sounded the alarm about the ubiquity and mainstreaming of hate speech directed against Muslims in Norway. That item was published a mere month before a White, Norwegian, right-wing extremist—who claimed Christian conservative leanings, and who had, since 2006, drenched himself in the netherworld of far-right online conspiracy theories about Islam and Muslims in Europe—committed the worst terrorist attacks in modern Norwegian history, killing seventy-seven people in Oslo and at Utøya on July 22, 2011. In that essay I was concerned with a state of affairs in Norway in which anti-Muslim ideas and sentiments had become so ubiquitous in the media and in public discourse—and legitimate and necessary critique of “religion” so conflated with hate speech—that few seemed to have the stomach to engage in any form of counter-speech, and hate speech against Muslims was hardly ever prosecuted.
Christianity, contemporary legacies, and the critique of secularism
by Samuel MoynMy last post took my response up to the twentieth century invention of “Christian human rights.” This one engages with crucial details about my case for continuity in that era before turning to the major challenge several of my commentators offer concerning my decision to stress discontinuity thereafter: if I am correct about the endurance of Christian politics in and through the inception of universal human rights, could it really be the case, as Paul Hanebrink asks, that “the decline of Christianity as a social and political force in 1960s Europe falls like a curtain” across the stage?
Truth and triviality: Christianity, natural law, and human rights
by Samuel MoynFor every phenomenon there is an indefinite, if not infinite, number of both continuities and discontinuities with what came before. To assert continuity, therefore, could not possibly exclude discontinuity altogether—or vice versa. It is only to assert what truth deserves our attention in the mix of overwhelmingly trivial relationships. The only arguments that matter, therefore, are why continuities or discontinuities are important, or interesting, or both.
Materializing the Bible
by Wei ZhuThe Immanent Frame contributor James S. Bielo and co-curator Amanda White have recently launched a new website called Materializing the Bible.