religion

Emir-Stein Center Video | Miroslav Volf | – “Is Allah God? If the answer to this question were simple, Professor Miroslav Volf would not have written a whole book on the subject. Still, in this engaging short video, Professor Volf provides a brief summary of the answer. Professor Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor […]

Antisemitism

On Anniversary of Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre: US Jews a Face Trump-Fuelled Far Right and a Fringe Left

H. Scott Prosterman

(Informed Comment) – October 27 marks the one-year anniversary of the Tree of Life Congregation massacre in Pittsburgh. This was a result of President Donald Trump giving aid and comfort to sinister right-wing forces, which had been buried under rocks of Western Civilization until he gave the all-clear signal. Since then, violent acts of anti-Semitism […]

Islam

Archeology and Early Islam: A Yemeni Inscription to “Wadd,” the love god Denounced in the Qur’an

Juan Cole

In the Qur’an, the chapter of Noah (71) contains a denunciation of the worship of a set of gods, most of which are not attested in northern and western Arabian inscriptions and the worship of which probably lapsed long before the era of the Qur’an (610-632 A.D.). One of them is Wadd, the god of […]

Islam

Jazz Great Yusef Lateef’s Journey to Islam

Shalom Goldman

“I want my music to awaken something that’s already in your heart.” (Informed Comment) – Among the hundred-plus African-American jazz musicians who embraced Islam in the mid-Twentieth Century, Yusuf Lateef, whose given name was William Huddleston, emerged as the elder statesman and spokesman of the group. One of the reasons was his remarkable longevity. Another […]

Iraq

On Yom Kippur, remembering the Diversity Iraq’s Mosul has Lost with Nationalism and ISIL

The Conversation

By Stephennie Mulder | – On Yom Kippur each year, as Jews around the world pray for atonement, the biblical Book of Jonah is read in its entirety. Jews recall the story of how God summons Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to tell its inhabitants to turn from their evil deeds. At […]

Houthi

Is Najran the Saudi Frontline in its Failing Yemen War, or its Achilles Heel?

Middle East Monitor

By Omar Ahmed | – The 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun is famed for his treatise Al-Muqqadimah and is regarded as “the father of social science”; he wrote about the rise and fall of states and civilisations. Tunis-born, his ancestors hailed from Yemen’s Hadramawt. He is notable for popularising the notion of ‘asabiyya which […]

History

The First Inscriptional Evidence for the Wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Aisha

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Saudi archeologist Muhammad al-Maghthawi has published a photograph of an inscription in the vicinity of Medina that seems to be the first to mention the Prophet’s third wife, `A`isha. It seems to date from the first century of the Muslim era (A. H.), and is probably from the late […]

Islam

The Qur’an, the Prophet, and a Forgotten History – Juan Cole in conversation with Hamza Yusuf

Juan Cole

From the podcast of the journal Renovatio: Journal of Zaytuna College. Juan Cole’s Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018) retells the history of the prophetic period in seventh-century Arabia through the context of a brutal war between the Iranian Sassanian Empire and the Roman Empire in the Near East. In this […]

Jewish History

Universal ethical truths are at the core of Jewish High Holy Days

Juan Cole

By Ronald W. Pies | – My most vivid adolescent memories of the Jewish High Holy Days are the painful rumbling of my empty stomach as I fasted on Yom Kippur, and the sharp blasts of the shofar – the ram’s horn – sounding from the synagogue pulpit. I was one of millions of Jews […]