In times of economic distress, it's only natural for people - and Americans have done this for many years - to look for a scapegoat. Depending on where you live in this country, the scapegoats are either, frankly, Mexicans or Muslims. So, you know, God save you if you happened to be a Mexican Muslim in America right now.

There's no question that homophobia is rampant among the world's 1.5 billion Muslims - but that doesn't negate the fact that there are huge groups of Muslims who have easily reconciled their faith and sexual orientation, like LGBT people in other faith communities.

You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian.

The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.

Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades who also happens to be Muslim.

The Israelis have not been willing to take the crucial step, and that is to withdraw from the Palestinian territory, the West Bank. And this is a crucial point and Israel has not only kept increasing the settlements in number, but have built highways among all the settlements from which the Palestinians are now excluded.

[Islam] is the dynamic conviction that a person's spiritual and worldly responsibilities are one and the same, that an individuals duty to the community is indistinguishable from his or her duty to God.