Major Nidal M. Hasan's Jihad Seminar Explained by Mark Durie These are explanatory notes on Major Hasan's seminar on 'The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.' An earlier post surveyed some features of the seminar. These notes, put together while Pentagon...
Many recitations of the first chapter in the Quran, known as Al-Fatihah, have been posted on Youtube. One, which caught my interest, broadcasts the sweet voice of Sheikh Fahd Al Kanderi. At the same time, striking images are displayed in the background, and English translations...
The contents of a two-year old seminar presented by Major Nidal M. Hasan, the medico believed responsible for the Fort Hood massacre, were apparently recorded in the form of powerpoint slides. These slides are in one sense nothing new. They review the basics of Islam: the...
One of the pinnacles of the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, was an Australian who became famous for his leadership of prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma railroad. Jesus' Sermon on the the Mount affected him profoundly. He read it in...
I have decided to coin a phrase, the 'tyranny of the irrelevant'. This refers to clutter, junk and tasks which fill our days but add nothing to them. I remember my grandmother's laundry: there was a copper - nothing like today's hot tubs - under which...
A deep problem with the west today is that we appear to have lost our capacity to love others. We love things more than we love people. We love our own ideas more than we love people. We love our money, possessions and fame more...
What does the Bible teach about violence? Some critics make the case for a moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam, claiming that the Bible is no less violent than the Qur’an.1 Certainly the conquest of Canaan, as described in the Bible, was a bloody one....
The other day, listening to the local radio station, I heard the two hosts chatting about religion: "Of course every religion teaches 'turn the other check.'" What a complement to Jesus Christ, that his distinctive and famous instructions on how to respond to violence (see Matthew...