Karen Armstrong

Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal read more

Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from read more

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

Compassion is not a popular virtue.

Compassion is not a popular virtue.

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious read more

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a read more

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.