Religion Dispatches
…lished in my studies (well more than established: a die-hard. I aced every class and with one exception, one B+, I kept that record until I graduated). By that time I began to notice that certain issues repeat themselves in the Muslim community. Somehow, I thought if I had figured something out for myself then everybody should have figure it out too, and we would be over that. It occurs to me that experience may not be the only teacher. I mean, I…
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…me? Why am I peeking into these windowless bedrooms at middle-aged, middle-class blondes in fuzzy slippers and sweats? Why am I spending an hour of my life watching a middle-aged advertising salesman in suburban Utah standing there in the predawn hours in his sweats explaining where he keeps his clothes? And perhaps because I’m tuned in on assignment as a religion columnist I’m disappointed by the near absence of religion in the episode. Early in…
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…nts, and that “a lot of people who had problems felt like they were second-class,” including Bullock, who said that he suffered from depression while working at the AFA. Employees were fearful of speaking out, according to Bullock. “We were puppies in the corner who learned to keep out mouths shut.” Inside the One News Now Newsroom The AFA’s radio and news division, in particular, said Martin, had become a place where authority could not be questi…
Read More…mented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation. And just to show that bullying isn’t merely a high school problem, there’s news of a Rutgers University freshman who killed himself a…
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…curriculum, and Barton’s role in that.) They believe in an entirely second-class status for women (some believe women shouldn’t vote). They are virulently hostile to gays and lesbians. They believe that any social safety net should be eliminated and replaced by church programs—available only to believers. (And they succeeded in getting an exemption from the health insurance mandate for believers.) So whether the Grayson ad takes Webster “out of co…
Read More…os Angeles, she recalled, would sometimes reach out to feel her head for horns. Late in her life, she and I talked about homosexuality—we talked about everything—and she recalled back in the 1950s a boy who grew up on her block in her middle-class Los Angeles suburb, a child who she always knew was different, and kindly she asked, “I wonder what has happened to him? I wonder if everything turned out okay for him?” Kindness was the core of her Morm…
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…That includes September 11th, 2001. I was a senior in college, walking to class on an unbelievably clear day, when the towers were struck and then fell, and we saw clouds of debris fill the sky. The World Trade Center was there and then it wasn’t. As president of New York University’s Islamic Center, I saw some of the hurt firsthand, I felt some of the anguish, I received some of the hate and I knew, immediately, how far across the world the effe…
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…up for any but the very wealthiest—that cuts affecting working and middle-class families will be extended. As for the “job killer” rhetoric of Sen. Hatch and the rest, the president could actually have some fun poking holes in the fantastical idea that handing rich and powerful people still more money means they will dutifully make productive, job-creating investments in the domestic economy. There has never been a shred of evidence to support…
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…t week when I was traveling in Israel and the West Bank with my journalism class. Caprica wasn’t aired where I was; neither could I download it. But its themes were present in the “othering,” religious extremism, ethnic tension, violence, and gender performances that constitute everyday life in the region. Fact is an adrenaline rush, but fiction has better sets and costumes. If you want to know about the real deal, my post is here and the students…
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…or example, the Baha’i and the Copts of Egypt, who are relegated to second-class status; the Ahmadiyya Community, a large Muslim minority victimized by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws; or revisionist legal scholars like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, author of Islam and the Secular State. Their advocacy for equal treatment of the heterodox, if it succeeds, will improve the lot of unbelievers in the Muslim-majority countries, yet its animating, organizing pri…
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