On October 19, 2008, former Republican Secretary of State and retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell appeared on the NBC News Sunday morning program Meet the Press to endorse Democratic candidate Barack Obama for president. Powell outlined multiple reasons for his choice, many of which were driven by sober policy concerns and a sense of which person was better suited for the job. But there was also a “push factor” behind his choice: he had grown weary of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the Republican Party and the attempts to tarnish Obama as a Muslim...

In al-Ghazālī’s “Wonders of the Heart”—an important part of the famous Muslim thinker’s multi-volume magnum opus, The Resuscitation of the Religious Sciences—we read a litany of metaphorical descriptions of the heart. The heart, for Ghazālī, is a powerful locus of cognition, affect, and control. It is a "king" and its “armies” are the external sense-organs and limbs, as well as internal psychic complexes and appetites. The king-heart has to command these armies in order to make a safe “journey to God.” Why does Ghazālī rely so heavily on metaphor in his description of the heart? What does he make of these illustrative examples, and what do we?

Paper marbling, or ebru in modern Turkish, has been introduced to North America by master artisans and the likes of Martha Stewart, primarily through the “European” traditions of marbling associated with fine bookbinding and other crafts. In contrast, Turkish styles of marbling are little known outside of Turkey, where it has recently become a very popular genre of art...