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Several days ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations released the following video showing demonstrators outside a charity fundraiser by a Muslim group in Yorba Linda, California:
Because of the recent spate of activist video clip manipulations, I held back to see if anyone protested. All I’ve seen is a statement by Congressman Ed [...]
One of the world’s top Shi’ite clerical leaders, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, has died:
“His career as an interpreter of Islamic jurisprudence and Shiite intellectual culture spanned more than half a century and touched on every aspect of public and private life for the millions of Shiite Muslims who considered him their ‘marja’, [...]
This morning saw the death of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, head of al-Azhar University, considered the world’s foremost seat of Sunni Islamic learning. Issandr El Amrani has an excellent overview of his career:
“Tantawi leaves a mixed legacy behind him: overall, the immediate verdict may be that he was too liberal for conservatives, too [...]
In reading the third and shortest chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World, “The Wahhabi Myth: From Riyadh to Doha,” I was struck by something that wasn’t there. The point of this chapter is that Wahhabism does not cause terrorism, nor is Saudi Arabia the main exporter of anti-American violence in the region. [...]
The second chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World tells the story of two organizations, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, which are vastly different but yet too often conflated in American minds. He portrays the Muslim Brotherhood as a critical component of Egypt’s political landscape which the United States needs to engage if [...]