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Franklin Graham is once again spewing hate of Muslims in the name of Jesus. If ISIS were holding a fantasy draft of people who could best help them start the holy war they dream of, Graham would clearly be taken early in the first round.

Here’s some breaking news for Graham: Muslims already “know” Jesus, and we love him. “To put it bluntly, you cannot even be a Muslim if you don't both believe in and love Jesus (peace be upon him),” well-known Imam Omar Suleiman and President of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research explained by email while at an airport waiting to board his flight to Medina, Saudi Arabia to go on hajj (pilgrimage.) Suleiman continued, “Muslims share the love of Christ with their Christian brethren while still upholding a unique understanding of monotheism that is shared with Judaism.”

Jesus is mentioned more frequently in the Quran than the Prophet Mohammed, and there are two chapters dedicated to the Virgin Mary that praise her as being "chosen above the women of all worlds.”

reconstitution of the history of philosophy as a[n] exclusively European affair was really a fabrication of 19th century philosophy

There was quite a significant tradition of Maoists in Senegal. The events of 1968 were very important in Senegal, so my generation came after that. We were not veterans of 1968, we were too young to participate; but we sort of lived the consequences of 1968. So my heroes were the students who led the strikes, the movement

it is true that the Marxist left was not very keen on even African philosophy. The critique of ethno-philosophy was coming from the left and their idea was that this was not true philosophy, looking at African conceptions, religious conception, and so on; because the idea of philosophy was really about philosophy being class struggle in theory. Paulin Hountondji, who is a main philosopher against ethno-philosophy, says as much: “ok, what Tempels did and followers of Tempels wrote was not truly philosophy.” He was very Althusserian saying that. So, my interest in Senghor’s thought was already a break from that that position coming from orthodox Marxism about what philosophy is and what philosophy should be. The weapons of criticism would be what philosophy is about, and not this exploration of African philosophy let alone Islamic philosophy because that was idealism, was religion, spirituality and not philosophy at all. You can find that kind of very strong position in Cameroonian philosopher Marcien Towa, who is the ultimate orthodox Marxist; who thinks that anything having to do with religion cannot be philosophy. You had this very narrow understanding of philosophy as following Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach. Philosophers have until now interpreted the world, the point is to transform it. So everything in philosophy that leads to that transformation is real, “true philosophy.” So, we all had that conception at one point and I, having started working in the field in which I was working, had departed from that. And when it comes to religion, even when I considered myself a Maoist, a Marxist, I have never actually been materialist in the sense of being atheist. Islam has always been somehow my interiority, coming from the background that I did. I’ve never departed from religion at all.

thousands — possibly tens of thousands — of people, rights groups and academics estimate, who have been spirited without trial into secretive detention camps for alleged political crimes that range from having extremist thoughts to merely traveling or studying abroad. The mass disappearances, beginning the past year, are part of a sweeping effort by Chinese authorities to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to impose a digital police state in the region of Xinjiang and over its Uighurs, a 10-million strong, Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that China says has been influenced by Islamic extremism

Uighur activists and international human rights groups argue that repressive measures are playing into the hands of the likes of al-Qaida, which has put out Uighur-language recruiting videos condemning Chinese oppression. “So much hate and desire for revenge are building up,” said Rukiye Turdush, a Uighur activist in Canada. “How does terrorism spread? When people have nowhere to run.”

While forced indoctrination has been reported throughout Xinjiang, its reach has been felt far beyond China’s borders. In April, calls began trickling into a Uighur teacher’s academy in Egypt, vague but insistent. Uighur parents from a few towns were pleading with their sons and daughters to return to China, but they wouldn’t say why. “The parents kept calling, crying on the phone,” the teacher said. Chinese authorities had extended the scope of the program to Uighur students abroad. And Egypt, once a sanctuary for Uighurs to study Islam, began deporting scores of Uighurs to China.

Beyond skirts and beaches, the 1960s and 1970s were also a time of vigorous intellectual debate about the role of religion in society. Debates between leftists, secularists, capitalists, Marxists, and Islamists raged across the region, from Egypt to Pakistan. Militant Islamists will dismiss those decades of more progressive, diverse thought and culture as decadent Western imports — the lingering after-effects of colonial influence. But if some of it was certainly emulation, much of it was also indigenous.

“Purifying the Land of the Pure.” The book, published last year, charts the slow death of minority rights and pluralism in Pakistan, and what it means for the future of democracy. The result is a sweeping but concise chronicle of how things unraveled. A minority herself, as a Shiite, Ispahani was careful to avoid polemic and opinion by delivering a thorough, methodically researched work. She and her husband, former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, have both faced death threats for their work and live in self-imposed exile in Washington. In her book, Ispahani tracks the unraveling to within a few years of the independence of Pakistan. The country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah — a secular Shiite — envisioned a country where “you are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship.” But Ispahani writes that “his hopeful declaration of religious pluralism” remains unfulfilled.

The trend toward making Islam a central tenet of life in Pakistan started soon after independence in 1947, a result of Muslim feelings of being victimized by both Hindus and British colonialism in India. By 1973, Islam was declared as the state religion of Pakistan. In 1974, under the ostensibly progressive Prime Minister Zulfiqar Bhutto, parliament declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims. A Muslim movement that started in the late 19th century, Ahmadis follow the teachings of the Quran and consider their founder to be a prophet, upsetting orthodox Muslims who believe Muhammad is the final prophet.

The West does, of course, face challenges in an age when movements of people happen far more quickly across vast distances than ever before; an age in which the notions of meaning and virtue are more contested; an age where technological advancements and their corresponding impacts on society develop more rapidly. All of that has understandable impacts on how communities and societies think of themselves and conceptualize their common bonds. The question is, how do societies address these challenges and find answers that are likely to heal the rifts that exist rather than exacerbate them on the altar of “saving ourselves,” when the notion of “ourselves” is a wholly mythical construct?

When it comes to conceptualizing themselves as a Western “us,” European Christendom has historically done so by positioning itself against the Muslims of the Mediterranean, be they Ottomans or Arabs

a form of Christianity that focuses on solidarity with the oppressed, rather than promoting tribalistic hate against the “other,” is precisely what Europe needs more of

What is the ecumenical frame and how does it revise Orientalist understandings of sectarianism?

My book seeks to offer a critical and empathetic story of coexistence without defensiveness—that is, to write a history that neither glorifies the Arab past nor denigrates the present and that explores the grim significance of sectarian tensions in the modern Middle East without being seduced by their sensationalism

I wanted to understand how they sought to imagine and build a world greater than the sum of their religious or ethnic parts—commitments that remain evident, if one is prepared to recognize them, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and beyond. I call this modern iteration of coexistence the “ecumenical frame” to underscore the modern active attempt on the part of individuals and communities in the region to both recognize the salience of religious pluralism and yet also to try and transcend sectarian difference into a secular, unifying political community

In your book, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), you identify a few different pillars of empire: globalization and neoliberalism, militarism, and the corporate media. You write, “The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code of democracy. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder.”

updates now would include the ways in which big capital uses racism, caste-ism (the Hindu version of racism, more elaborate, and sanctioned by the holy books), and sexism and gender bigotry (sanctioned in almost every holy book) in intricate and extremely imaginative ways to reinforce itself, protect itself, to undermine democracy, and to splinter resistance

In India, caste—that most brutal system of social hierarchy—and capitalism have fused into a dangerous new alloy. It is the engine that runs modern India

Will a one-week training enable Egypt’s imams to sound more reassuring, more emphatic and appear more camera-friendly on television? The Ministry of Religious Endowments certainly hopes so.

Courses include teaching the imams how to speak in talk shows, telephone interviews and TV debates. It also teaches them body language for interviews on TV as well as writing sound bites for various types of televised interviews. 

the course aims to develop the media skills of the imams so that they can “dominate the religious discourse,” counter extremist views expressed by the Salafists and efficiently debunk false interpretations on religion in TV programs.

Throughout what is commonly known as the West, there has been a slew of books, articles, and public interventions calling attention to the notion of a cultural crisis within. Such a phenomenon ought to be followed by self-reflection, self-interrogation, and retrospection. By and large, however, the past decade has seen far more of the opposite: The alarm surrounding crisis has been more of a call for “us” to attack and problematize “them,” which invariably leads to propositions such as “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board,” as Douglas Murray, a hardcore right-wing pundit, once argued—not to mention conspiracy theories that blame all the ills of the modern world on those who look different than “us,” meaning white Europeans, or, worse, pray differently than “we” do.

Ryan identifies the West as an intellectual space, rather than solely a geographical one. His model of what the West entails has three pillars: “the belief in a moral endpoint; the trio of republican values (liberty, equality, solidarity); and universalism.” Ryan correctly points out that all of these pillars are in crisis—and yet, the situation is, he argues, “not entirely hopeless.”

When it comes to conceptualizing themselves as a Western “us,” European Christendom has historically done so by positioning itself against the Muslims of the Mediterranean, be they Ottomans or Arabs

Abramovich is perhaps the most visible of the “oligarchs” surrounding Putin, who are widely perceived as extensions of the Russian president and keepers of a vast fortune that is effectively under the Kremlin’s control. Much of this wealth was extracted from Russia’s enormous energy and mineral resources, and is now stashed in secret bank accounts in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, in empty mansions and condos from London to Manhattan to Miami, and in yachts and private jets on the French Riviera.

as much as 60% of Russia’s GDP is offshore

Abramovich—who, like many of the most prominent Russian oligarchs, is Jewish—has for years been a prolific donor to Jewish philanthropies. He has given half a billion dollars to Jewish charities over the past two decades, sending money linked to Putin’s kleptocratic regime circulating through Jewish institutions worldwide