I argue that shifting assumptions about “authentic Islam” have catalyzed the scandalization of mystical music in Pakistan. The emergence of…
Sonic controversy: “Hinduistic music” in Pakistan
morality
Making budgets moral again
The release of the Poor People’s Moral Budget calls forth decades of efforts to reframe the budget as a moral…
Words can break bones
So we have a few problems. First, we have trouble talking to each other because the talk itself has weight.…
Playing God
In his new book Minding the Modern, Thomas Pfau presents a searching, and often scathing, indictment of the modern regime…
Conceptualizing pluralism and consensus in the modern Western world
Without pointing out those places where I agree with Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation, I would like to add a…
Secular supercessionism and alternative modernity
Recent years have seen the resurgence of “metahistories” that seek to provide a single complex narrative of seemingly disparate events…
Get over it
In many ways, the argument of Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation is a familiar one. Gregory aims to explain our modern condition…
Has modernity failed?
Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation is noteworthy for its readiness to tread upon questions of morality and metaphysics that most historians…
SCOTUS roundup: Rulings on DOMA and Prop 8
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law…
The “New New Atheists”
Christopher R. Beha discusses a recent article he had written for Harper's Magazine in which he considers three publications, written…