This is worrying.

The challenges I face in the Religious Studies classroom today are unlike any I have encountered in more than three decades of teaching…it seems that the more religious people become, the less willing they are to engage in critical reflection about their faith. For many years, I have begun my classes by telling my students that if they are not more confused and uncertain at the end of the course than they are at the beginning, I will have failed. But now, as rarely in previous years, a growing number of religiously committed students consider such a challenge a direct assault on their faith…Religious correctness has become the latest version of political correctness. For those who

More on Buruma. Because after another, slower reading I think the disagreement is not so elusive or subtle after all. There are some things he says that I disagree with quite strongly – though there are other places where it’s the implications of what he says (whether he’s aware of them or not) that I disagree with.

For instance, I wasn’t decided enough about that concluding sentence: ‘A free-spirited citizen does not tolerate different customs or cultures because he thinks they are wonderful, but because he believes in freedom.’ That’s a terrible assertion, because it is so wide open; it could mean anything. ‘Different customs or cultures’ could mean any damn thing, including the most awful tortures and oppressions. … Read the rest

John Carter Wood has a different take on Kelek, Buruma and the rest. He thinks Bruckner did a hatchet job on IB and TGA. Maybe so, but I have more reservations about their replies to Bruckner than John does. They’re somewhat elusive reservations though…a matter of sensing, or thinking I sense, implications, of fitting statements into an existing context where they seem to me to take on a significance they wouldn’t have without the context. See what I mean? Elusive stuff. I wonder if I can pin any of it down…

Try Buruma.

Having turned from devout Islamism to atheism, she tends to see religion, and Islam in particular, as the root of all evils, especially of the