Karen Armstrong

The book “Islam: a short history” is a non-fiction book that was published by Modern Library in 2000 by the British writer Karen Armstrong. Karen Armstrong was born 14. November 1944, she was a former Roman Catholic nun that writes popular books about the history of religion. She first became well known in 1993 with her book “A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam”. Her work focuses on the common features of the major religions, such as the importance of compassion and the Golden Rule. I personally think that the way Karen Armstrong has written “Islam: a short history” is really well done. The book fallows a story line like a novel rather than a textbook, which got me more captivated and interested in keeping…

The author Karen Armstrong shares a brief explanation on why the crusaders are to blame for the various misperceptions in the Muslim religion including their reason behind the unjust violence. Armstrong also mentioned how the Muslim cared little for the crusades until a feud was created between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Unlike the Muslim who were misunderstood to be violent but the Ottoman Empire as said in this chapter viewed as a weak and defenseless empire. Moreover, she also uses those…

In this episode of NOW with Bill Moyers: Karen Armstrong on religious Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong is interviewed on her life of being religious and where she stands with religion at the time of the interview. She was a former roman catholic nun and after years of not being happy with the way the practices of that religion she had left her convent. She continues to speak of how certain religions lacked compassion, that they use fear to control people. She speaks of violence in religions…

feedback. If a professor is supposed to be giving a writing instruction course, it is unsatisfactory to be given only one writing assignment back halfway through the semester. As well, Michael often times asked him when something would be given back or feedback would be given, but the only response given would be “It’ll come soon” or “I’m working on it.” After a while, many students in the class stopped asking direct questions related to grades, knowing that they would either get an indirect…

The archetypal role of women in A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong, “Creation”, and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse illustrates the nurturing, stay-at-home role of women. In Myth, Armstrong clearly paints the picture for us: women were the attentive figures in these early civilizations. Because of their maternal role, she explains, the earth later was seen as female. The same theme plays out in the Mohawk myth “Creation”: we see the universe created by a holy female being and she is treated…

In the excerpt from Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction,” Armstrong argues that the reasons that literature “for, about, and by women” became more popular are still up for debate, with seemingly no definitive answer. However, Armstrong produces three ideas through which she argues are a part of the reason for this cultural transformation: one, “sexuality is a social construct;” two, the “modern individual” became “an economic and psychological reality;” and finally, that this first…

I’m a dead man. Humorless, forever somber, what I was supposed to be my entire life. But you know that, they all know that. The papers, the news, I’m dead world! But I wasn’t always dead, and I wasn’t always alive either. Ah yes, my first baby steps, one small step for man, one giant leap to comedy gold. Ha ha, you can keep that Armstrong, both of you. That stuff’s way too powerful. But yeah, I’m a comedian, or at least I was until my bones manifested into the meaningless microphone I’m…

In Karen Armstrong’s passage titled “Homo religiosus”, she takes a spiritual approach writing about the indispensability of religion in ancient cultures. In contrast to Armstrong’s text, in her essay “Biographies of Hegemony”, Karen Ho writes about the cut-throat reality of Wall Street that mirrors the ancient religious rituals in a modern day environment. In a similar approach to Ho’s, in his text titled “Son”, Andrew Solomon writes a modern narrative describing his life struggles as a gay…

Karen Armstrong and Thomas Madden’s respective presentations of the Crusades, seem to present two extreme positions – either the crusaders are intolerant fanatics blindly killing people groups who were never aggressively antagonistic in return; or the Arabs are the fanatics, and the crusaders are selfless soldiers fighting a purely defensive war. Of the two pieces, Armstrong’s analysis of the Crusades is more overtly driven by a modern political agenda, but the belligerent extremes of both…

Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic sister, was sure that the West was simply pretending to be tolerant and liberal towards other cultures and religions and yet at the same time were extremely ignorant. So, Armstrong went out to help solve misunderstandings of other cultures and religions. Most recently, she has claimed that religion is not simply a belief. Rather, she views religion as a specific type of art. More specifically, Armstrong compared religion to poetry, which, like religion,…