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Obama will renominate currently-serving Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the same position within his Administration. This is a pretty high-profile move that I think speaks volumes about Obama’s willingness to put policy and experience first and ideology second. Gates will be tasked with ending the war in Iraq, the opposite of what his job…

Sumbul Ali-Karamali, author of the book The Muslim Next Door, writes of an encounter with someone who subscribes to the fallacy that Islam and muslims are inherently anti-Semitic: I recently spoke on Islam and my new book at a local senior center. As members trickled in, a white-haired man approached me and announced, “I have…

Talk Islam and City of Brass seem to have been the first to report on Iranian blogfather Hossein Derakshan’s arrest in Tehran last week, but the A-list bloggers are now awakening to the story, as are some of the journalist bloggers, which bodes well. There’s a great short piece in the IHT about Derakshan, also…

I’m not particularly keen to judge another man’s faith, so I pass no judgement on Michael Jackson’s conversion to Islam. However, I will note that Islam is big enough to contain me and Jackson within itself. Check out the discussion about Jackson’s conversion at Talk Islam. UPDATE (2/13/09): Jackson’s lawyer denies it.

Celebrated blogger Hossein Derakshan is literally the godfather of the Iranian blogsphere. Iran is one of those countries where speaking out requires courage, and where speech is anything but free. He has been living in Canada recently, but returned to Iran just a few weeks ago – and now has been arrested, rather ironically, on…

I am pleased to announce the launch of Planet Islam, an aggregator of posts from blogs from around the Islamsphere, including muslim blogs as well as non-muslim ones that post on issues related to Islam and muslims. Planet Islam is a sub-project of Talk Islam, where those same bloggers meet and share links and discuss…

Obama has announced another top-level appointment, Eric Holder, who served as deputy Attorney-General under Clinton and now will be (pending Senate confirmation) the nation’s lead lawman. The relevant and important information about Holder is his record and reputation: A New York City native who graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School, Holder spent years…

Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. This is significant for many reasons, not least of which because Hillary is perfect for the job and is supremely qualified for it. Arguably, the more important reason will be because of what her selection tells us about the character of Obama’s Presidency. Joe…

Takfir is what excommunication is called in Islam – the process of declaring someone to be outside the faith. This is a pernicious concept because it is usually used by self-appointed guardians of the faith to try and impose their own strict interpretations on others. In many ways, it’s as much a political act as…

One of the singular best references about Islam, in all its complexity and diversity and nuance, is an online and free collection of essays and reference articles: Oxford Islamic Studies Online. It builds on the classical Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam, as well as several other major reference works, and will be continually updated online. As…
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