Category Archives: Essays

H.A.R. Gibb on D.S. Margoliouth (d. 1940) “…the criticism of other, and often less qualified, scholars seldom moved him from his convictions.” From “David Samuel Margoliouth, 1858-1940,” an obituary by the great Islamic scholar H. A. R. Gibb, published in … Continue reading →

Rifqa Bary Fled Qaradawi’s “Justice”   The legal team representing Rifqa Bary has issued an “Investigation and Intelligence Memorandum in Support of Petition for Dependency” which discusses the theology and jurisprudence of apostasy espoused by her local mosque—the Noor Islamic … Continue reading →

Coming soon….   Last evening I read a particularly illuminating anecdote from Wafa Sultan’s forthcoming book (due out October 13th), “A God Who Hates,” which provides an irrefragable counterpoint to the taqiya-mongering drivel on Rifqa Bary’s apostasy case recently spewed … Continue reading →

And Yale University Press Has Run Out of Courage The craven capitulation of Yale University Press—which has excised the banal cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad from Klausen’s forthcoming (and likely apologetic, if not downright warped) book on the Danish … Continue reading →

  Blogging will be light for the remainder of this global cooling summer as I attend to some of my FAVORIT, and other professional needs.   Over the summer, I will also be reading renowned Australian Professor Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth: … Continue reading →

A dogmatist, “quite exceptionally impenetrable by facts.”   Michael Totten. is the classic uninformed roving Middle East reporter who consistently (and tediously) displays his profound historical and doctrinal ignorance of Islam as a badge of honor, or more aptly hubris. … Continue reading →

  Alfred E. Obama-Chavez-Nasrallah Alan Caruba and Andrew McCarthy make it eminently clear why our Manchild President (for whom Islam IS Third Worldism) is both fencepost dumb, and just plain dangerous.   Caruba’s enumeration of Obama’s burgeoning litany of idiotic decisions … Continue reading →

Guest Blog By Hillel Stavis Samuel Huntington?  Montgomery Watt?  Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq? Andrew Bostom? Are you looking for the most perspicacious source on historical Islam?  Forget about them.  Turn to Max and Dave Fleischer, the cartoonists from the 1930’s and … Continue reading →

In 1919 Sadiqeh Dolatabadi (d. 1962), pictured above, published the first women’s periodical in Isfahan called Zaban-e Zanan (The Women’s Voice) which (unsurprisingly!) faced opposition from the Mullahs in Isfahan. After ending the publication of Zaban-e Zanan in Isfahan, she … Continue reading →

Rachmaninoff’s beautiful Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (especially the famous interlude which starts at around 3:30 in this rendition by Pletnev) has punctuated a decade long effort in my life which came to an abrupt end yesterday—a bittersweet moment, … Continue reading →