Religion Dispatches
…nd hilarious account essentially made ‘Byzantine’ mean what it means to us today. Justinian was addicted to money; Theodora was addicted to sex. It was a marriage made in hell, and in at least one place Procopius entertains the serious possibility that the emperor was a demon rather than a man. The book is a gold-mine for evidence of reigning social mores in the sixth century in the eastern Roman empire. It is often fascinating to learn what forms…
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…rove, and has already been proven, unlike Ike having to prove a negative.) Today, Obama denounced “sideshows and carnival barkers,” adding, “we don’t have time for this kind of silliness.” Which is exactly why he shouldn’t have bothered caving into their ridiculous demands; within moments Joseph Farah of WND decreed the release “raises as many questions than [sic] it answers.” That sideshow, although driven in recent weeks by Donald Trump, was dri…
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…t those kinds of things with religious and ritual significance. With diets today, there seems to be a lot of fear involved, too. It’s terrifying to live in a place where the causes of diseases like Alzheimer’s, autism, or ADHD, or the causes of weight gain, are mysterious. So what we do is come up with certain causes for the things that we fear. If we’re trying to avoid things that we fear, why would we invent a world full of toxins that don’t rea…
Read More…licy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differing political orders. This realization has led us to pose a number of crucial questions to those engaged in the promotion of religious freedom as a stable and singular human right. These questions, explored in detail in the PoRF volume…
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…uslims are looking for ways to raise families and live the American dream. Today, the American Muslim community feels like all Americans do: outraged, betrayed, and demanding justice be served quickly. Zeenat Rahman is even more personal: I went to the mosque today, to observe the ritual Friday prayer. I prayed for the souls of the victims and for their families, not because the alleged perpetrator is Muslim, but because as a Muslim, that is what…
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…urately, lie and obfuscate, all to propose the end times can be mapped out today, which is cool, because you’ve already got all these ridiculous maps. So why not, I don’t know, invade a country preemptively? One cannot insist on innocuous analysis when one’s last chapter is ‘yes, Islam is evil, but Muslims are not.’ While Muslims might be too stupid to know Islam is evil—sound familiar?—we can rescue them from their ignorance—sound familiar? Thi…
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