ChristianMoe.com

Welcome to my new website. It is still under construction, migration (from my U. of Oslo site), and experimentation, but some content is already up.

If you are interested in contemporary religion and public affairs in general, and Islam, (Southeast) Europe, human rights, territorialism, etc. in particular: well, so am I, and you may — as the site grows — find some things of interest here.

A new book from Éditions EHESS analyzes the international justice on offer for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, and how it is perceived in the region.

In Sarajevo over the weekend, I attended a conference on Balancing between the Freedom of Speech and the Right to Religion in the 21st Century, arranged by the Inter-Religious Institute (Međureligijski institut). I was there to give an introductory plenary talk, “Religion and Offensive Speech: Framing the Issue.”

The other new book that’s out is Anne Stensvold’s Western Balkans: The Religious Dimension (Oslo: Sypress, 2009). This is a collection of four lengthy studies by my colleagues in the Religion and nationalism in the Western Balkans project, which Anne initiated and was in charge of.

Ingrid Vik writes on religious peace-making efforts in the region, and Anne Ross Solberg on the activities of Islamic groups from Turkey, while Cecilie Endresen discusses inter-religious relations in Shkodra.

A couple of new books have appeared with my stuff in them.

I have a chapter on “Islamic Education in Slovenia” in Islamische Erziehung in Europa / Islamic Education in Europe, ed. Ednan Aslan, Wiener islamisch-religionspädagogische Studien 1 (Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2008).

It's a thick volume with an impressive list of 26 countries covered.Some other people from the Kotor Network are also among the contributors.

I have another new edited volume out, titled Images of the Religious Other: Discourse and Distance in the Western Balkans. It is a collection of articles from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, based on a joint project of the Kotor Network, and published by CEIR in Novi Sad, Serbia.

I just received my copy of New Directions in Islamic Thought: Exploring Reform and Tradition, edited by Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen and myself, and published by I. B. Tauris. This volume is just the sort of thing that I hoped to work with when I went into Religious Studies, so I am very satisfied to have helped bring it out.

Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade yesterday. Barely two weeks after Vojislav Koštunica was replaced as prime minister, it proved possible to arrest a man who has been successfully hidden from the Hague Tribunal for 13 years.

I just turned 37. Some people think it’s a dangerous age. And they’re the kind of people it seems you just have to believe in, because their voices tell you they have seen it all and lived to tell the tale.

At the age of 37 (Marianne Faithfull informs me), Lucy Jordan realized she’d never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.