FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH centuries were decisive for all the people of God. It was a particularly crucial period for the Christian West, which had not only succeeded in catching up with the other cultu...
He was decisive and wholehearted in everything he did, so intent non the task at hand that he never looked over his shoulder, even if his cloak got caught in a thorny bush. When he did turn to speak t...
Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice:Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize th...
In a conservative society, stability and order were far more important than freedom of expression.
In fact Hell seemed a more potent reality than God, because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively.
In the West the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident. As one who speaks on religion, I constantly hear how cruel and aggressive it has been, a view...
In the official imperial theology, the titles Son of God and Lord usually applied to the emperor and the word gospel referred to his achievements. By speaking of Jesus in these terms, Paul was tacitly...
It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can n...
It seems that when human beings contemplate the absolute, they have very similar ideas and experiences. The sense of presence, ecstasy and dread in the presence of a reality—called nirvana, the One, B...
Jefferson the deist was accused of being an atheist and even a Muslim.
Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains...
Jesus
Jezus, de Logos, zou de functie van de verwoeste tempel overnemen en de plaats waar de joden de goddelijke aanwezigheid konden ontmoeten[...]. Het jodendom en zijn heiligste symbolen waren vervangen d...
Quraysh, who had shown throughout the day that they were still in thrall to the overbearing haughtiness and intransigence of the jahiliyyah, a stubborn resistance to anything that might injure their s...
The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in Western history; they were devastating for the Muslims of the Near East, but for the vast majority of Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Malaya,...
The world passed through Mecca, but did not stay long enough to interfere. Arabs were able to develop their own ideology and could interpret the knowledge and expertise of their more sophisticated nei...
Thus had been born the absurd type of apologetics that attempt to prove the veracity of the Bible by finding a rational explanation for the various miracles and myths. Jesus’ feeding of the five thous...
We have seen that, like the weather, religion does lots of different things. To claim that it has a single, unchanging, and inherently violent essence is not accurate. Identical religious beliefs and...
What is lawful, what is unlawful? asked Ku Yuan, prince and poet of Chu. This country is a slough of despond! Nothing is pure any longer! Informers are exalted! And wise men of gentle birth are withou...
Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own?
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