Via Open Culture, religion scholar Karen Armstrong (whom Mark has discussed several times -- and who's book The Case for God may be the text for a future episode) comes out in favor of the "Ground Zero Mosque," noting that it would be a Sufi Mosque. "We all need a good dose of Sufi-ism," she says, and quotes Ibn Arabi, a twelfth-thirteenth century Sufi mystic, as saying:
Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the omniscient and the omnipresent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for he says in the Koran, wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature, and in praising it, he praises himself. Which he would not do if he were just, for his dislike is based on ignorance.
By: Wes Alwan
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