In his recently published The Flight of the Intellectuals (Melville House Publishing, 2010), Paul Berman, writer in residence at New York…
Islamism
Is Mumbai’s resilience endlessly renewable?
I grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) in the 1950s and early 1960s. I spoke Tamil with my mother, a…
The death of secular India is greatly exaggerated
As the citizens of this vast metropolis seek to restore some semblance of normalcy to their lives, it is important…
The challenge of creating change
Abdullahi An-Na‘im's Islam and the Secular State has rightfully received a great deal of attention and commentary. A prominent Muslim…
Preaching to the converted
Islam and The Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a is avowedly didactic, aiming to persuade Muslims in public debate…
Secularism and the paradoxes of Muslim politics
Few books in Islamic studies have been as eagerly awaited or intensely debated prior to publication as Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im's…
After Bhutto
The world will long remember Benazir Bhutto as a modern Muslim woman who served two terms as Pakistan’s first woman…
How religion gets mixed with violence
Violence has been accepted, then, by jihadis, warriors defending Islam, as a necessary step in creating a purer Islamic society.…