Here is TED award winner Karen Armstrong’s speech about religion and compassion. It will hopefully be another step toward dispelling harmful stereotypes about religion in general and Islam in particular (although it does not simply let religious people off the hook for taking responsibility for their traditions…)

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The following is a question a brother asked in an email, and my answer. It is about love on the Sufi path, and is reprinted here with his permission.

Question:

Salaam Irving:

Religious Extremism: The Battle for Pakistan’s Soul?

While religious extremism is perhaps the scrouge of our generation, and granted that religious extremism has been a part and parcel of Pakistan over the last several decades, the Lal Masjid episode has revealed a nation on a collision course with itself.

What are we doing to help fight the Battle for Pakistan’s Soul? What can we do? Are we as big a hypocrite as the West when we don’t try to understand what this rage is all about?

Sitaram made a comment yesterday asking me what I thought of my time as a graduate student in religion. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for over 10 years now, but never got around to. But here goes.

AltMuslim.com finally got around to publishing my article! Here's the link for those who are interested.