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Do we need theory?
Of late, I have been having a lot of conversations with people in the nonprofit sector. And one clear divide I am noticing is between those who ‘do’ stuff and those who ‘think’ about stuff and theorize about it. The assumption is that those who can, do and those who don’t, teach. You may have […]
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Insiders and Outsiders
In a recent exchange about the Israel-Palestine issue with a friend, he informed me that as an ‘outsider’ to an issue, I couldn’t fully appreciate it. As someone who has academically studied this issue, I do have strong convictions. As a fellow human being, I have sympathies. Finally, as an intellectual, I believe that I have […]
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Are you an Insider or an outsider?
Do you have to be an American to write about America, or a Black person to write about African American issues? Or a Christian to write about Christianity? These questions get asked, quite often, especially in academic circles. While the general academic rule of thumb, or the ‘mood’ in academia today is that this is […]
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How to write about Islam?
Amidst all the noise about the end of the world scenarios being portrayed as a result of ISIS conquest of parts of Iraq and Syria and equally banal assertions that Islam is somehow inherently violent, and needs ‘reformation’, the common man out there is left confused. As someone studying Islam in America, I am at […]
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Beyond the Melting Pot?
The recent Coca Cola ad during the Super Bowl stirred up quite a controversy. While most of the negative reaction to the ad was misplaced racism, the ad did bring up an important question that for the most part, went un-examined: that of the myth of America as the land of opportunities and a place […]
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Do We Need a New Civil Rights Movement for Religion?
As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday this week, it is relevant to ask: Has religion taken the place of race in American society? What I mean by this is whether the taboos and other aspects associated with race in the 1960s and earlier have started to be associated with religion. While Dr. […]
