Former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic describes submission to the will of God as "the strength of the soul to face the times."
 

 A report from a recent Nawawi Foundation conference that took on the question, "What is the Islamic Tradition?" In attendance were Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.
 

 An overview of the recent letter dismantling some of the Pope's recent misrepresentations of Islam.
 

 Imam Zaid Shakir responds to the tendency of Muslim ideologues to use Islam to justify political needs.
 

 Dr. Elizabeth Debold speaks to the stark reality of the arrogance of the ego-self, which seeks separation and individual recognition. The ability to name the evil that lurks within the individual self empowers us, she explains, to address the evils of terrorism, violence and oppression; and indeed, the fact that the pursuit of our ego and selfish desires can only end in our own individual destruction as well.
 

 More than 1400 years ago, God informed us in the Qur'an -- the revealed scripture of Islam -- that interest-based money (riba or usury) was off limits. In the article below, a respected international finance expert, Belgian International Finance Professor Bernard Lietaer, argues that global interest-based money is the root of destructive problems such as the wealth gap, environmental devastation and sustainability issues. He proposes that we re-introduce, on a larger scale than currently in practice, complementary money systems based on the system of barter in order to foster long-term financial cooperation rather than avaricious competition over money that inevitably remains scarce in an interest-based economy.
 

 Noted Islamic scholar and George Washington University professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr comments on the meaning of the Muslim fast (sawm). This excerpt from a larger work of Dr. Nasr is a reminder of Islam's ascetic character and the necessity of spiritual poverty (faqr) before God.
 

 American convert to Islam, Siraji Umm Zaid, wonders at the reluctance of conservative Muslim leadership to speak against honor killings, female genital mutilation or the denial of education to women. The basis for condemning such behavior is within Islam itself, but when Muslims are silent, the rights of Muslim women become championed by those who might bear animosity towards Muslims
 

 Prominent Muslim scholar Dr. G.F. Haddad responds to the concern that explanations of marital rights and responsibilities most often give rights to men and duties to women.
 

 According to the Washington Post, the Taliban announced the beginning of a campaign to destroy all statutes in Afghanistan, including the historical statues of Bamiyan, in the name of Islam.
 

 Noted American Muslim intellectual and activist Dr. Ingrid Mattson characterizes the Muslim's embodiment of the Prophetic behavioral ideal (Sunnah) as the realization of a sacred art form.
 

 This essay by Nazim Baksh articulates the sense in which the word "tradition" may be used in describing the mainstream practice of the Muslims throughout history. Rather than being a label, it is a broad area of practice of al-din that provides a time-tested means of determining which applications of our tradition may be said to be "authentic."
 

 Sexual difference not only creates a predisposition to be interested in certain kinds of issues, but fundamentally affects every way in which we handle concepts.
 

 The main issue in "What Is the Ko-ran?," by Toby Lester (January Atlantic), is not how one looks at the Koran as a so-called historical text and analyzes it according to the principles of textual or biblical criticism but, rather, how one conceives the very notion of revelation.
 

 An edited transcription of a talk given by Shaykh Abdullah bin Bayyah on July 31, 1999 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.
 

 We shall see that literalism was a school of thought in Islamic jurisprudence, though not considered a very strong one by traditional scholars. But in tenets of faith, and particularly in interpreting the relation of the mutashabihat to the attributes of Allah, literalism has never been accepted as an Islamic school of thought, neither among the Salaf or early Muslims, nor those who came later.
 

 Imam Tahawi's al-'Aqidah, representative of the viewpoint of ahl-al- Sunnah wa-al-Jama'a, has long been the most widely acclaimed, and indeed indispensable, reference work on Muslim beliefs, of which this is an edited English translation.
 

 Difference of opinion between people is natural and inherent due to their characters, ways of thinking and understanding. These affect people's perception and judgment of things.