Monday’s bombing in the Saudi city of Medina stands out, even among the wave of terrorist attacks in recent days. It wasn’t the death toll. It didn’t produce the scenes of carnage like Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad that killed nearly 200 people or last week’s attack on the airport in Istanbul that left 44 dead.…
This article was initially published at Al-Medina Institute. In recent days there has been much debate over Islam’s position on homosexuality. Anyone who has read any Persian poetry, read a forthright travel guide to the Gulf or heard Pakistanis or Afghans joking knows that same-sex attraction and activity has not been unusual in Muslim societies.…
Why does the Quran tell us that the Jews claim Ezra (ʿUzayr) is the son of God (Quran 9:30), when Jews do not make this claim or anything approaching it? This is not a question that arose just recently during an interfaith panel. It’s not a new question at all. Even in the ninth century, the Zaydi Imam and renowned scholar al-Qāsim b Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 860 CE), who had studied Jewish and Christian scriptures in Egypt and who had engaged in debates with priests and rabbis, said that he had never encountered a Jew who believed Ezra was the son of God. Nor was this a question that Muslims pondered at ease in the libraries of Baghdad or Cordoba.
If the core of Islam is so rotten, then why does such a tiny, insignificant minority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims choose to carry out acts of violence in the name of their religion?
The Salafi Al-Nour party won the second-most seats in the last parliamentary election and is now the only major Islamist political force allowed to operate in Egypt. The group supported Mohammed Morsi’s overthrow and lent Islamist credibility to the military’s decision. But it quickly found itself at odds with the interim rulers, and now faces…
Jonathan Brown and Abdur-Rahman Abou Almajd in dialog about how should the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) be introduced to the West? Q: Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, it is excellent introduction to the life of Muhammad, well balanced between elements of faith and rational discussions, 144 pages, it’s very Short Introduction, What do you want to add?…
