Faatimah Knight’s college decision came down to eight schools where she would have majored in English, or Zaytuna College, where she could study Islamic classical teachings in an environment that embraces all aspects of her Muslim faith.

The Brooklyn native is part of the inaugural class of what Zaytuna’s founders hope will be the country’s first accredited, four-year Muslim... [Read more]

In seventh-century Arabia, the storyteller was valued more than the swordsman. The audience sat on the floor surrounding the gifted orator as he captivated the eager listeners with beautiful poetry narrating their history. In the twenty-first century, the art form may have evolved to include motion pictures, TV shows, theater productions, novels, and stand-up comedy, but they all serve the same... [Read more]

The ninth Islamic month is Ramadan, a time of spiritual connection between a Muslim’s heart and God through prayer and contemplation of the Quran.

The cornerstone of Ramadan is the fast. Briefly, a fasting Muslim rises before dawn for an early meal with plenty of water. The dawn prayer is performed, and then maybe some reading of the Quran, or going back to bed before work or school.... [Read more]

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If doubts remained about the relationship between the Catholic Church’s spectacular failure to address the clerical child sex abuse crisis and the church’s glaring system of gender apartheid, the Vatican put them to rest in July. Engendering a firestorm of criticism, their... [Read more]

The Forward, a national newspaper of news and opinion about Jewish life, recently published a list of 50 influential women rabbis in America. It was a response to the annual Newsweek list of the 50 “most influential” American rabbis, which includes very few women, none of whom are high on the list.

The emergence of these lists suggests both good and bad news. The bad news, as... [Read more]

Iñigo of Loyola was 30 years old when his leg was shattered by a cannonball during the siege of a castle by the French military in Pamplona in 1521. This pivotal incident, which might have been merely a tragic setback to another person, marked the beginning of his new life.

After Ignatius stayed in Pamplona for several days, his French captors, who treated him “with courtesy and kindness,”... [Read more]

Much has been written recently about new cell phone applications targeting the religious community. Almost overnight there have appeared a series of iPhone and other downloadable smartphone apps which enable worshippers from every spiritual stripe to look up holy book verses, access meditation instructions, or receive prayer reminders on the fly. There is even an app for Muslims to locate the nearest... [Read more]

Analogies are dangerous weapons. If you can persuade someone convinced that “B is terrible” that “A is like B,” then they will have to agree that A must also be terrible. Having established with this analogy that A is terrible, it follows that we must then abandon A, go to war against A, stop believing A, vote A down, invade a Middle Eastern country that starts with A, keep... [Read more]

By Steve McSwain

Thirty-four million Americans have given up on organized religion, according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey. Yet for many of these dropouts — from churches, synagogues, temples and so on — spirituality is still a vital part of their lives.

How else would you explain the phenomenal success of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power... [Read more]

Rumi is justly celebrated as one of the great poets of human history. When I started reading him as an undergraduate 45 years ago, I did not know Persian and relied on the work of R. A. Nicholson, who produced the first critical edition of Rumi’s 25,000-verse Mathnawi along with a complete English translation and two volumes of commentary (eight volumes in all). At that time Rumi was practically... [Read more]