Patricia Nelson Limerick's"Tales of Western Adventure," CHE, 9 May, on being a public intellectual, leads to a conversation between Tim Burke and Eric Rauchway.

Michael Dirda reviews Albert Camus' Notebooks, 1951-1959 for the Washington Post, 11 May.

Sharon Steel,"Steam Dream," Boston Phoenix, 15 May, looks at the origins of steampunk subculture.

Finally, Juan Cole's"Is Obama the Apostate, or is Bush?" Informed Comment, 15 May, replies to Edward Luttwak's"President Apostate?" NYT, 12 May. There's a difference between"groupthink" and"informed comment."

Ralph E. Luker - 5/18/2008

So the odds of Obama's being targeted by a Muslim assassin for being a "apostate" are, at most, no greater and probably less than his being targeted by any other third world assassin for being an American president. Seems hardly worthy of an op-ed in the NYT -- unless the author just wants another round of "Obama's a Muslim" agitprop.

Jeff Vanke - 5/18/2008

I agree. But no one can speak for all one billion Muslims on that point. And that's my point.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/16/2008

Senator Obama was *not* born a Muslim. I'm surprised that you haven't yet understood that. His father may have been an apostate. The Senator cannot be.

Jeff Vanke - 5/16/2008

I retract my retraction on a related post.

On this question of whether a born but never-practicing Muslim may be defined an apostate.... Cole allows that there may be deviations from the "classical Islam" he's describing. He even names those deviations. And on the moderate side, "People don't always act the way the obscure law books suggest" (as in murdering adults who convert from practicing Islam to another religion).

Some in Islam are proposing to reverse shia law on murdering apostates. That's great. How they'll ever manage that without a fundamental debate on Koran origins is beyond me.

(But that debate may be coming, when a German consortium finishes its study of ancient Korans photographed 60-100 years ago, when Muslim archivists still allowed such things.)

I concur, there is much room for optimism in moderate Muslims. But where are Salman Rushdie's champions among them? Riyadh? Gaza? Ramallah? Even Cairo? It turns out, these champions may be even rarer than the Salafi or Hanbali deviations from classical Islam.

Kelly Woestman - 5/16/2008

Sharing knowledge far and wide and not being the only source . . . great ideas for furthering the advance of knowledge both in breadth and depth . . .