What does it mean for a Muslim woman to wear a veil? What is the role of women in Islam? What is the relationship between culture and faith? Leila Ahmed, an author and professor at Harvard Divinity School, investigates these topics most recently in A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence,
When one hears the term dress code, images come to mind of the French teenage media darlings of last winter, fighting for their right to wear skimpier clothes to school. A new school rule had stated that inappropriate clothing choices like short skirts, piercings, board shorts, and clothing with holes
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech ensconced in a dramatic performance in front of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday night. The highlight of Netanyahu’s delivery, which captured media attention everywhere, was the “clear red line” he drew over a cartoon-like bomb with a fuse, a diagram
Last Tuesday, September 11, United States ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three of his staff members were killed when violent riots broke out in Benghazi, fueled by a 14-minute YouTube trailer of an American-made film called “Innocence of Muslims.” Now, U.S. officials believe that the Benghazi riots were
Since December 2010 countries across the Middle East have employed a variety of tactics that have brought down multiple dictators and irrevocably changed the region. In The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era, Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren break down the timeline and
Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th – 9th Century), the revelatory exhibition now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accompanied by a rich catalogue of the same title), was recently lauded in the New York Times, praised specifically for “offering a soothing picture of artistic continuity.” The
For more than a decade now, “Islam” has been a contentious word, associated alternately with terrorism, political regimes, and a widely misunderstood religious faith. Since September 11, 2001, American political commentators have been split between those who call the acts of terrorism typified by the destruction of the World Trade
Israel: An Introduction, new from Yale University Press, provides a comprehensive look at a nation that has always been at the center of the world’s stage, tracing its tumultuous history and political realities while providing an overview of its economics, population, and culture. In this excerpt from the book’s chapter
Ivan Lett— I’m no political junkie, just a book publishing historian who comes away from the glory of Britannia every so now and then to find the ever-changing world around me to be…well, ever-changing. When news of the revolution in Egypt broke last winter, I was still in a holiday
Sarah Underwood— Who betrayed whom in Palestine? Many people with many purposes would call western nations like Great Britain or eastern powers like the Arab League the traitors, with Arabs and Jews alternating the position of betrayed. For Efraim Karsh, author of Palestine Betrayed, one important and forgotten answer is