During Bill Maher’s October 3, 2014 program Real Time (on HBO), he and his guest Sam Harris got into a now well-known and heated debate with actor Ben Affleck over mainstream views in the Islamic world. The way in which the debate was framed was whether or not Islamist radicals represent only a fringe movement within the Islamic world (Affleck’s view), or something more significant (Maher’s view). In this context, Maher and Affleck argued over whether or not Muslims, in general, hold what Maher described as “pernicious beliefs.”

A specific belief Maher highlighted was that a majority of Muslims (all Muslims, not just “extremists” or “radicals”) would support killing someone who left Islam, to which Affleck responded:

“The people who would actually believe in that you murder someone if they leave Islam is not the majority of Muslims at all…”

Maher later responded:

“I can show you a Pew poll of Egyptians–they are not outliers in the Muslim world–that says like 90% of them believe death is the appropriate response to leaving the religion.”

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This week the world watched as a three day drama played out in France that began when Islamic militants slaughtered twelve people during an attack on the offices of the Paris based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The magazine was well known for its satirical attacks on Christians, Jews, and French politicians, but had recently become a source of controversy for publishing cartoonish images of the Prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims viewed as both forbidden and offensive.

A partial video of the Paris attack showed a particularly brutal moment when a wounded French police officer (a Muslim, no less), lying on the sidewalk, begged for his life as a terrorist coolly walked over to him and shot him in the head before they made their escape. A massive French manhunt began immediately afterwards, during which a supporter of the attackers took hostages at a Kosher market and threatened to kill them all if the police did not back off. Ultimately, it all ended in the killing of three militants, who refused to give up, and an ongoing hunt for the wife and accomplice of the hostage taker at the kosher market. By the time the terrorists were done, they had claimed the lives of at least sixteen French victims.

This followed in the wake of well-publicized Islamist attacks in western nations against police officers in New York City, soldiers in Canada, and café patrons in Australia. Dozens of other terrorist attacks took place around the world during the time of the French crisis, including, most notably, the slaughter of over 2000 people by the Islamist group Boko Haram in a series of deadly attacks on a Nigerian city and surrounding towns. Although this was far deadlier than the events that took place in France, it received relatively little attention in western media. In part, the reason for this was due to the unique reasons for the attack on Charlie Hebdo. While the militants of Boko Haram are trying, like ISIS in Iraq and Syria, to establish an Islamic caliphate, the attacks in Paris, more specifically, are seen as an attack on the western ideal of freedom of speech.

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ISIS and Medievalism – An Interview with Dr. Sharan Newman

Since the events of September 11, 2001, westerners (in general) have been much more focused on the Islamic world than before. The “war on terror” that followed over the next decade, much of which was centered around the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, became an all consuming focus of western media during that time. Almost everyone had some sort of personal connection to the war, whether through a relative, friend, or neighbor that served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Consequently, through their personal associations and almost non-stop media coverage, Americans and other westerners became far more interested in events in the Middle East and elsewhere as they tried to make sense of not only the violence of 9/11, but also the wars themselves and the extraordinary number of Islamist terrorist attacks that took place during this period. For some, it seemed Samuel Huntington’s so-called “Clash of Civilizations” was playing out in a clear and observable way.

Naturally, the scholarly community in the west has paid considerable attention to these events as well. They are a curious bunch and generally tend to pay a higher degree of attention to current events than most people, regardless of their disciplines. In this case, how could they not? Historians, political scientists, scholars of religion, and many others have devoted their lives to the study of topics related to the events of the last thirteen years.

In particular, the expertise of medieval historians, who otherwise tend to work on relatively obscure topics that few people see as relevant for the modern age, have suddenly seen their opinions and research find a newfound relevance for the modern world. Continue reading →