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Houellebecq's Omelette

As Chekhov conveyed boredom without being boring, so Michel Houellebecq conveys meaninglessness without being meaningless. Indeed, his particular subject is the spiritual, intellectual, and political vacuity of life in a modern consumer ­society—France in this case, but it could be any . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Forgotten Islam  Gabriel Said Reynold’s review of Mustafa Akyol’s book, Reopening Muslim Minds, makes fascinating reading (“Liberal Islam,” March). Instead of focusing on what is wrong with Islam, Akyol calls Muslims back to forgotten graces and truths in the Islamic tradition. Akyol . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberal Islam

Islam,” Mustafa Akyol writes in his latest book, “is not the powerful, creative, sophisticated, beautiful civilization that it once was.” Instead, Akyol argues in Reopening Muslim Minds, Islam is in a crisis, a crisis that cannot simply be blamed on Western colonialism or ­imperialism. . . . . Continue Reading »

Churchill in Barbary

Small wars, the kind that pit a superpower against an apparently overmatched enemy, are easy to slip into and can be hard to get out of. But it need not always be so. The British in their imperial magnificence at the turn of the twentieth century fought wars against Islamic fanatics on the northwest . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

In his latest book, Allah: God in the Qur’an, Professor Reynolds has united deep erudition with clear pedagogical style to introduce the Qur’anic vision of God to Western lay readers. He flies close to the Qur’anic text throughout, while drawing from later traditions to shed light on the . . . . Continue Reading »

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