Featuring Jose Casanova, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Tariq Modood, professor of sociology at the University of Bristol and Director of the University’s Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship; and Aristide Zolberg, Walter P. Eberstadt Professor of Political Science at The New School University.
Chase Robinson, Provost of the Graduate Center, moderates a discussion including questions such as: What impact do Muslim immigrants and Islamic practices have on the societies they join? What unique challenges do Muslim immigrants face? In both America and Europe, which have welcomed greater numbers of Muslim immigrants than ever before, how is the Enlightenment ideal of tolerance balanced against the realities of vast cultural and religious differences? How do Western nations promote self-perceived openness in the face of anti-Muslim sentiment in their countries?
Bio
José Casanova
José Casanova is a prominent scholar in the sociology of religion. He is a Professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center's Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular.
He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has become a modern classic in the field and been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian.
Tariq Modood
Tariq Modood is professor of sociology at the University of Bristol, his research interests include racism, racial equality, multiculturalism and secularism. He is the founding director of the Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol, and the Bristol director of the Leverhulme Programme on Migration and Citizenship with UCL. He is also a co-founder of the scientific journal Ethnicities.
Modood was awarded an MBE for services to social sciences and ethnic relations in the 2001 New Year Honours list and elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in 2004. He has written several articles in The Guardian.
Chase Robinson
Chase Robinson is Provost of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
He is the author of The Formation of Islam, Sixth to Eleventh Century (vol. 1 of the 6-volume New Cambridge History of Islam, 2009), The Legacy of the Prophet: The Middle East and Islam, 600-1300 (Cambridge, 2009), Abd al-Malik (Oxford, 2005), Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003), A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (Oxford, 2001), and Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 2000).
Aristide Zolberg
Aristide Zolberg is Walter A. Eberstadt Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Faculty of New School University in New York City and director of its International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship.
He has served twice as chair of the Department of Political Science and is a member of the Committee on Historical Studies as well as chair of the NSU component of the New York City Consortium on European Studies. He held the University-in-Exile Chair from its founding in 1984 to 2002.
Major world religion founded by Muhammad in Arabia in the early 7th century AD. The Arabic word islam means “surrender”—specifically, surrender to the will of the one God, called Allah in Arabic. Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion, and its adherents, called Muslims, regard the Prophet Muhammad as the last and most perfect of God's messengers, who include Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others. The sacred scripture of Islam is the Qur'an, which contains God's revelations to Muhammad. The sayings and deeds of the Prophet recounted in the sunna are also an important source of belief and practice in Islam. The religious obligations of all Muslims are summed up in the Five Pillars of Islam, which include belief in God and his Prophet and obligations of prayer, charity, pilgrimage, and fasting. The fundamental concept in Islam is the Shari'ah, or Law, which embraces the total way of life commanded by God. Observant Muslims pray five times a day and join in community worship on Fridays at the mosque, where worship is led by an imam. Every believer is required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city, at least once in a lifetime, barring poverty or physical incapacity. The month of Ramadan is set aside for fasting. Alcohol and pork are always forbidden, as are gambling, usury, fraud, slander, and the making of images. In addition to celebrating the breaking of the fast of Ramadan, Muslims celebrate Muhammad's birthday (seemawlid) and his ascension into heaven (seemi'raj). The 'Id al-Adha festival inaugurates the season of pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims are enjoined to defend Islam against unbelievers through jihad. Divisions occurred early in Islam, brought about by disputes over the succession to the caliphate (seecaliph). About 90% of Muslims belong to the Sunnite branch. The Shi'ites broke away in the 7th century and later gave rise to other sects, including the Isma'ilis. Another significant element in Islam is the mysticism known as Sufism. Since the 19th century the concept of the Islamic community has inspired Muslim peoples to cast off Western colonial rule, and in the late 20th century fundamentalist movements (see Islamic fundamentalism) threatened or toppled a number of secular Middle Eastern governments. In the early 21st century, there were more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world.
“Muslims must kill non-believers wherever they are unless they convert to Islam.” - Ali Gom’a (grand mufti of Egypt, the highest Muslim religious authority in the world, Al Ahram, April 7, 2008) source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8066
“Muslims who share the same goals as Osama bin Laden but are pursuing them through non-violent means are celebrated by gullible Westerners as moderates.” - Robert Spencer
"It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam.” There is no such thing as moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists – moderate, they are not." - Ali Sina
"The real intentions of Euroislam must be concealed from the general public." - Tariq Ramadan
Sure, quote the idiots that supports your bias and prejudice. What else is new?
What does it matter? A great deal...Of course it matters. Democracy and Liberty offer a possible brighter future more than Totalitarianism does. Consider it type of lesser of evils at the very least...IF you consider democracy as a less than ideal form of society...a proposition I do not subscribe to.
You lack the intellectual capacity to understand the quote by Gandhi.
“Muslims must kill non-believers wherever they are unless they convert to Islam.” - Ali Gom’a (grand mufti of Egypt, the highest Muslim religious authority in the world, Al Ahram, April 7, 2008) source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8066
“Muslims who share the same goals as Osama bin Laden but are pursuing them through non-violent means are celebrated by gullible Westerners as moderates.” - Robert Spencer
"It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam.” There is no such thing as moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists – moderate, they are not." - Ali Sina
"The real intentions of Euroislam must be concealed from the general public." - Tariq Ramadan
No, you are incorrect. Al-Islam is a way of Life. It's a complete way of life that invite us to Wholeness and Completeness thereby obtaining Peace. Whenever the life is fragmented leaving out important essentials that makes for a whole life there will be no peace.
All of the important aspects of human life developed and were born out of the spiritual and social expressions from the soul and it found its first expression in the family life.
Al-Islam don't believe in separating man's spiritual life from his rational life, or separation the material interest from the spiritual aspirations.
So exactly how many thousands of years are we supposed to wait for this "PEACE"?
How many millions must die before this wholeness is achieved? If something doesn't work after a year or two, it is a failure, if it hasn't worked after 1000 years it is an EPIC Failure!
Religion was invented to explain the natural world to people who's brains were not yet developed enough to understand the rising of the tides, or the setting of the sun. It was not done in malice, it was done in ignorance.
When the Jews invented their religion it was done out of malice. It was a plot concocted by a group of roughly 80 rich old men, over the course of 26 years to convince enough people build an army to slaughter, rape, pillage and enslave their neighbors. They did not have enough people in their own country to build a large enough army to destroy the Canaanites, they needed help, the countries around them had no motivation to help them, so they invented a single god to rally behind. Pagans had too many gods, and no one god held enough influence to rally a large enough army behind. Embolden by their success in whipping up a religious frenzy to defeat their enemies, they used their religion to control other groups, mainly women. But the originators of the hoax held too much power and they didn't want to share with the rest of the tribe. They couldn't claim any royal bloodline but they wanted to keep all the power and money in their own families, so they made all kinds of rules about who could be counted as a real Jew. The poor Jews knew that they did not stand a chance of marrying into these families and getting any of that mother's bloodline that would allow them in on the spoils, so they revolted and invented a "savior" for the poor. There were LOTS of poor, so they made for a HUGE army and overwhelmed the Jews with their sheer numbers. It was gang mentality at its most dangerous. The Romans at first thought to squash the filthy stinking rabble by enacting laws to keep the smelly thugs out of the cities on market day, so the Christians added the cleanliness clause to their religion and added pagan holidays to ingratiate themselves with the Romans. After awhile the Romans decided that they needed more bodies to catch arrows so they enlisted the hordes of Christians in their conquest for world domination by telling them it was a "holy" war. That was their downfall, they thought they could control the mass of ignorant unwashed savages, but they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. The rest is history as they say, anyone with enough charisma can now add their own spin to the religion that the Jews started and amass great wealth and power. It is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, you only need 1 incredibly shrewd and calculating, ruthless, charismatic greedy man to lure in a bunch of incredibly stupid greedy poor people and you have a religion with all its protections and plunder to be had.
And that is the truth about religion!
No, you are incorrect. Al-Islam is a way of Life. It's a complete way of life that invite us to Wholeness and Completeness thereby obtaining Peace. Whenever the life is fragmented leaving out important essentials that makes for a whole life there will be no peace.
All of the important aspects of human life developed and were born out of the spiritual and social expressions from the soul and it found its first expression in the family life.
Al-Islam don't believe in separating man's spiritual life from his rational life, or separation the material interest from the spiritual aspirations.
What it makes Islam difficult to understand to westerners it that Islam is nos just a religion or just a political ideology, but it is both things. Things are not so simple. And that it is both things makes it not necessarily bad or good, but just more complex. In the west, religion and politics have been separated (as also religion and economy, and economy and politics, which does not mean that these three ranges and many others do not interact and be connected sometimes very causally and in a determining relation, for they do and sometimes, how!, but there are a lot of people that feel that economy and politics could use some ethics, and that is why they see in a good light the force of religion in politics. Maybe better politics or better economy would let us dispense with the meddling of religion in both.
If I understand you correctly, you approve of mad destruction when committed in the vaunted name of liberty and democracy yet you condemn mad destruction committed in the name of totalitarianism.
It is a very interesting set of morals that you profess which allows you to so rationalize acts of mad destruction.
What does it matter? A great deal...Of course it matters. Democracy and Liberty offer a possible brighter future more than Totalitarianism does. Consider it type of lesser of evils at the very least...IF you consider democracy as a less than ideal form of society...a proposition I do not subscribe to.
What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction
is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? Gandhi.
member. 
