The online magazine Inside Higher Ed posed some thoughtful questions about Light without Fire and those questions got answered.

In order to succeed, American institutions must mean more to the country than what might be represented by a charismatic founder or the earliest thinking about what the institution can do. The success of institutions must be measured not by the mere fact of their creation (or the reputation of the creators), but by the people and the breadth of new ideas that the institutions create.

Read the full Q & A here.

This week’s New York Magazine “What to Do” feature suggests listening to the new Dearhunter album, going to see Iron Man 3, and reading Light without Fire. Excellent ideas all.

Scott Korb’s gracefully written story of Zaytuna College in California, the first liberal-arts Muslim college in the country, is suddenly ultrarelevant, as we all consider what it means to be an assimilated American, especially an Islamic one.

Read more here.

In Thursday’s New York Times is an op-ed I wrote with Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, New England’s largest mosque.

Representative King and others have it exactly, completely wrong—the American Muslim community has actively and repeatedly, day in and day out, rejected such radicals on religious grounds: they do not know mercy.

Read “No Room for Radicals,” our thoughts on the response to the Boston Marathon bombings.

The New School Free Press is running a short Q & A with me today, in advance of my book talk at Eugene Lang College this evening, April 24, at 6p.

Here are the details for the event.

This evening, April 23, I will be with Professor Maureen O’Connell talking about Light without Fire at an event put together by the Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus Muslim Student Association.

Event begins at 6p and will be held in the Atrium.
113 West 60th Street | NYC

Join the event here.

Columnist Caille Millner writes about Zaytuna College in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s a sickening cycle that echoed again this week with the Boston Marathon bombing: The unexplained terrorist attack, the unreflective accusations hurled toward any Muslims within reach, the unprovoked attacks and epithets, the bang of the revenge drum.

This familiar pattern doesn’t make me feel optimistic, but perhaps a small school here in the Bay Area - Zaytuna, the nation’s first four-year Muslim liberal arts college - can offer us a sliver of hope.

Author Scott Korb (who teaches at the New School and New York University, and is an acquaintance of mine) has written a new book about the fascinating and difficult first year of the school, “Light Without Fire: The Making of America's First Muslim College.” Since I’ve been reading it, these issues had been percolating in my mind even before Monday’s terrible events.

Read more here.

On Wednesday, April 24, join Eugene Lang College Religious Studies professor Mark Larrimore, Lang senior Michael Kaplan, and me as we discuss the place of Islam in America and the hope of Zaytuna College, a new experiment in education.

Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, room 510 | NYC

Time: 6p-8p

More information here and here.

Today, April 16, Light without Fire will appear on the shelves of stores, in the warehouses of on-line distrubutors, and in e-catalogues ready for download to e-readers. I hope you will find a copy for yourself.

If you’re in New York City, I'll be presenting the book publicly for the first time, in conversation with Imam Khalid Latif, at the NYU Bookstore.

NYU BOOKSTORE

726 Broadway | NYC

The event begins at 6p.

Today, Guernica  runs the first magazine excerpt from Light without Fire, under the title “A Lesson in Daily Longing.”

All around were young people focused on the physical requirements of water and food and rest. And yet, here was Zaid, asking them not to be so focused.

New York Times religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer reports on Zaytuna College in this weekend’s paper.

Scott Korb, author of “Light without Fire,” a new book about Zaytuna, said in an e-mail that he sees no ambivalence about Zaytuna’s mission, to foster an American Islam. “The message from the founders is clear: America is home,” he wrote. “Now this hasn’t been a universal among every Muslim community I’ve encountered. But at Zaytuna it seems to be.”

Read the story here.