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Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…g no disjunction between religious beliefs and democratic principles. In a number of Muslim-majority countries, the preference was even stronger. In Jordan, for example, 54% of men and 55% of women want Sharia to be the only source of legislation. Interestingly, from a comparative perspective, a 2006 Gallup poll indicated that 46% of Americans say that they want the Bible to be a source of legislation. These findings corroborate earlier studies co…

Tree of Life, Book of Job

By Jay Michaelson

…oo beautiful a filmmaker to let that happen. As in his past films, such as Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick shows rather than tells his religious/mystical sensibility. At least as much time is devoted to gazing upward at trees or running through grass (a recurrent trope in all Malick’s films) as to conventional depictions of plot and character. Emmanuel Lubezki’s luscious cinematography (notice that I’m mentioning the fil…

Laura Ingraham Hangs Up on Rev. Over Jesus/Abortion Comments

By Evan Derkacz

…plan, it seems, was for Rev. Turner to spend 15 minutes discussing the 40 Days for Prayer campaign, which was designed to show that there’s widespread support for a woman’s right to choose in the religious community. That did not happen. [Rush transcript may not be verbatim] *** LI: Welcome to our show. RT: Thank you for inviting me. LI: You are a minister so I take it you follow the teachings of Jesus. RT: Yes, that’s true. LI: If Jesus were her…

Heaven On Earth: A Non-Hysterical History of Shari’ah

By Haroon Moghul

…a much narrower focus on jihad and terrorism. Considering the Gallup poll numbers, which indicate that the more religious a person claims to be, the less tolerant they are of militancy and violence, how do you explain your moving from how Muslims conceive of Shari’ah to a narrower and more securitized frame of Shari’ah, which seems to exclude many Muslim experiences of Shari’ah outside certain crisis areas, like Pakistan and Afghanistan? Structu…

Religious Differences Are Real (and Tolerance Can Be an Empty Virtue)

By Stephen Prothero

…long the way. I think the rant goes back to my college and graduate school days, when I repeatedly heard from professors that all religions were different paths up the same mountain. That sentiment never made any sense to me. I had Jewish and Muslim and Christian and atheist friends, and none of us was under the illusion that we agreed with each other. Still, we seemed to get along just fine despite (and perhaps even because of) our differences. W…

Pathological Optimist Documentary Makes a Medical Martyr of Anti-Vax Crusader

By Gordon Haber

…ymptoms—a sharp regression in language ability and social skills—within 14 days of receiving the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) inoculation. The story, for obvious reasons, was picked up by the worldwide media; Wakefield became famous overnight. But subsequent investigations by Brian Deer, a British journalist, revealed that the Lancet paper was a fraud. (Just one example: the onset times were almost all fudged.) Deer also discovered that Wakefield h…

How Monsters are like Religion

By Julie Ingersoll

…my research rather than teaching. As great as that is, it means I spend my days submerged in a world that is not mine; hours upon hours of reading Rushdoony and Barton, watching Glenn Beck, and visiting church-organized tea party events. So I relish the intellectual escape on the weekends listening to a couple of my favorite public radio shows, one of which is PRI’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. Monsters were the topic last weekend, and, after dis…

Fact-checking Scripture: “Those who do not work should not eat.”

By Daniel Schultz

…for the landless poor to gather. This is how people stayed alive in those days. The exchange illustrates the difficulties of using scripture in politics. Protas’ Leviticus citation has in part social applications: Jews are told explicitly not to cheat in their business dealings, not to exploit immigrants or guest workers, and to pay all workers the wages owed to them. But it also prohibits shaving a man’s temples or beard, which is why many ultra…

Country Music Minus the Culture Wars: A Lesson from a Legend

By Paul Harvey

…n of Southern religious populist imagery that neither the folkie-left from days of yore nor the jingoistic right of much pop country has ever fully grasped. It was not that early country could never be politicized, or topical; natural disasters, epochal events, and moral admonitions were the stock in trade of country and blues musicians and songwriters alike. But the more recent culture wars tie between country, religious fundamentalism, and a Tea…

What is Community?

By Amina Wadud

…en diversities. So, what makes a collective? What makes an ummah? In these days of the nation-state, it is not a single geographical or political empire. There is no single “new world order.” There are only collectives. Some collectives are national, some are regional, some are spiritual. My shaykh likes to talk about this community that has been a working cooperative for almost 4 decades. What I love is that the boundaries are fluid enough to acc…