Multiculturalism

Over at Inside Higher Ed they have a news report on complaints about the content of required reading for students entering college. This comes from the National Association of Scholars, a group dedicated to complaining that multiculturalism is corrupting our precious bodily fluids pushing aside the shared heritage of Western civilization, so most of it is pretty predictable. I was surprised by one thing in their list of commonly assigned books this year, though: What are the freshmen reading? Based on the report's analysis of 290 programs (excluding books that are required parts of courses),…
The New York Times has an awesome interactive map which shows which sectors the foreign born from various countries are concentrated. Nothing too surprising, but nice to see it quantitatively displayed. Below the fold screenshots from "Computer software developers" and "Skilled construction workers."
Talk Islam points to a controversy over a comment that the Muslim chaplain made in regards to apostasy on a listserv. First he outlines the dominant legal position with Islam today & historically in regards to apostasy: There are a few places on the Net where one can find informed discussions of this issue (Search ["Abdul Hakim Murad"|Faraz Rabbani" AND "apostasy"]) . The preponderant position in all of the 4 sunni madhahib (and apparently others of the remaining eight according to one contemporary `alim) is that the verdict is capital punishment. Of concern for us is that this can only…