A week ago I was in Sarajevo having a pleasant dinner with some academic colleagues from the university there. One scholar about my age asked my advice on how to be a productive scholar writing while raising young kids. I shared what I’d learned… kids need to sleep, and you need your time to work……
Incest & Widow Burning: How Much Can Muslims Stomach?
A few months ago, I wrote that, as a Muslim and as an American: I support the right of same-sex couples to have civil marriages according to US law. Islam does not approve of same-sex acts, but I don’t believe that the social or religious traditions of any one group should dictate what sort of…
Doesn’t anything change? More bad reasoning on the cause of ISIS violence
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?
How should rationalists deal with dogmatism? – The Case of the Birmingham Quran Pages
One of the reasons I do not to write about early Islamic history is that I find it very difficult to manage the constant clash of faith claims and appeals to empirical evidence. When it comes to religion in general, Islam in particular, and the origins of Islam even more particularly, scholars find it difficult…
Tom Holland, the Five Daily Prayers and they Hypocrisy of Revisionism
On a radio show on BBC 4 a couple of weeks ago, Tom Holland raised his claim (made originally in his book In the Shadow of the Sword on the origins of Islam) that the famous five daily prayers in Islam were not originally part of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. They were actually imported into…