Religion Dispatches
…g it into the conversation about Fort Hood is counterproductive. As Middle East expert Marc Lynch argues, the way we frame our discussions can help Al Qaeda; to make everything the fault of Muslims risks radicalizing a population. While Major Hasan’s religion seems important to some commentators, there’s a real problem with religion in the military that continues to receive scant attention. As reported by Jeff Sharlet (Jesus killed Muhammad) and o…
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…ed such a scenario. Fraenkel believes philosophy can save the world—or at least make us more respectful of one another. A professor at McGill University and the author of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy, Fraenkel traveled the world to spread his gospel. His mission took him to East Jerusalem, where he co-taught a seminar on philosophical religions with the eminent Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibe…
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…mmunion. He did so because he had come to feel a responsibility to those “least among us” who were not moving on a path toward acceptance in as straight a line as many in the late ’60s and early ’70s had hoped. But you also hear more than a subtle echo of what Matthew learned from Merton’s heterosexual torment. It remains true that given our national climate, it will take a while to let love loose. And then to let love grow, deeper, greater, wider…
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…tian-Jewish Relations. These spitting assaults have been going on for at least a decade, and like many expressions of tension in Jerusalem, the attacks represent scores that many observers thought were settled long ago. For spitting at crosses and clerics was not unknown in those parts of Christian Europe where Jews and Judaism were often persecuted and where this represented the only recourse for a powerless people to express contempt. In the th…
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…more were made refugees. Caldwell makes no mention of any of this, nor of Eastern Europe’s ancient Muslim communities. There have been Eastern European Muslims for longer than Protestantism has existed, and yet Islam is still, centuries on, the Other; notable only as immigrant victimizer. As a public intellectual one might expect that he has some interest in another perspective, that he might give a holistic account… Caldwell’s Other Crisis Thoug…
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…uck me, traveling through Texas, was that you look at billboards along the freeways, and the way that the new religions, the evangelicals, promote themselves, is exactly the way that banks do. They talk about “extra interest” from God, and it’s all individuals becoming religious because they think they can get a personal benefit out of it—and the people offering the benefit are making money out of it. So it’s a business. And that’s very different…
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…ni and Shia Islam are essentially the same? Or our diplomats in the Middle East to tell them that the differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are inconsequential. So I’m for those soldiers and those diplomats—curious readers who know you can’t understand the world without understanding the powerful role the world’s religions play in it. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? All of the above. I have…
Read More…for many; in particular for those killed and their families who deserve a better explanation, one that does not simply sweep aside the tragedy of war and the damage it does to those who engage in it. Another line of argument seeks to tie Major Hasan’s actions to Al-Qaeda and suicide bombings. For example, Foxnews.com reported on November 6: “Federal law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that Hasan had come to their attention at leas…
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…en if others see them as outsiders, they are more worried about creating a better America. They believe they are better than what Maj. Hasan represents: Among those attending Friday prayers at the Killeen mosque was Sgt. Fahad Kamal, 26, an Army medic who wore his Airborne uniform, and later he said he was angered on several levels. “I want to believe it was the individual, and not the religion, that made him do what he did,” said Sergeant Kamal,…
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…erican adoption of both religions are variants of Black thought about “the East,” and deserve to be thought of as Black forms of Orientalism—not in a pejorative sense, but in an affirmative and romantic sense. So at one point the book was at least twice as long, before I decided that the Islam/Orientalism piece needed to be a book of its own. Even then, the Black Israelites book continued for five more chapters concerning interactions and race rel…
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