{"id":34,"date":"2008-10-18T10:57:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-18T10:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html"},"modified":"2008-10-18T10:57:57","modified_gmt":"2008-10-18T10:57:57","slug":"dr-olivers-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Oliver&#8217;s Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"aladdin-4.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/197\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/span>Congratulations to my dear friend and BU colleague <a href=\"http:\/\/martynoliver.blogspot.com\/\">Martyn Oliver<\/a>, who passed his dissertation defense yesterday in Boston. (He&#8217;s also getting hitched in 3 weeks&#8211;not a bad autumn.) I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of reading bits of his dissertation, which is about the literary construction of Islam. <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">Martyn<\/span>\u00a0Dr. Oliver tells the story of how the story collection <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Book_of_One_Thousand_and_One_Nights\">&#8220;1001 Nights&#8221;<\/a>&#8211;an Arabic text, mind you, not an Islamic one&#8211;shaped Western conceptions of the religion of Islam. See: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0103639\/\">Aladdin<\/a>&#8220;&#8211;the most popular stories we tell about a culture, in some ways,\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">are<\/span> that culture.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>This is, of course, true for Christian culture as well. I&#8217;m not sure there is a case quite like &#8220;1001 Nights&#8221; and its radical displacement of Islam from outside Islam, but certainly there are many texts, extra-biblical texts, which have shaped the cultural imagination about what Christianity is. Dante&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Divine_Comedy\">Inferno<\/a>. Milton&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paradise_Lost\">Paradise Lost<\/a>. Cecil B. DeMille&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ten-Commandments-Judith-Anderson\/dp\/0792154649\">&#8220;The Ten Commandments.&#8221;<\/a> (Seriously. And no, it has almost nothing to do with Judaism, despite its source.) Any others? Which extra-biblical stories do you think have had a shaping effect on what people believe about Christianity?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congratulations to my dear friend and BU colleague Martyn Oliver, who passed his dissertation defense yesterday in Boston. (He&#8217;s also getting hitched in 3 weeks&#8211;not a bad autumn.) I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of reading bits of his dissertation, which is about the literary construction of Islam. Martyn\u00a0Dr. Oliver tells the story of how the story&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dr. Oliver&#039;s Islam - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dr. Oliver&#039;s Islam - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Congratulations to my dear friend and BU colleague Martyn Oliver, who passed his dissertation defense yesterday in Boston. (He&#8217;s also getting hitched in 3 weeks&#8211;not a bad autumn.) I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of reading bits of his dissertation, which is about the literary construction of Islam. Martyn\u00a0Dr. Oliver tells the story of how the story&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-18T10:57:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/files\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dr. Oliver's Islam - Text Messages","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dr. Oliver's Islam - Text Messages","og_description":"Congratulations to my dear friend and BU colleague Martyn Oliver, who passed his dissertation defense yesterday in Boston. (He&#8217;s also getting hitched in 3 weeks&#8211;not a bad autumn.) I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of reading bits of his dissertation, which is about the literary construction of Islam. Martyn\u00a0Dr. Oliver tells the story of how the story&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html","og_site_name":"Text Messages","article_published_time":"2008-10-18T10:57:57+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/files\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg"}],"author":"Patton Dodd","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html","name":"Dr. Oliver's Islam - Text Messages","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/files\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg","datePublished":"2008-10-18T10:57:57+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-18T10:57:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/files\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/files\/import\/aladdin-4.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/dr-olivers-islam.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dr. Oliver&#8217;s Islam"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/","name":"Text Messages","description":"Christianity and culture with Patton Dodd","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe","name":"Patton Dodd","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","caption":"Patton Dodd"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/author\/pdodd"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}