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RDPulpit: Ahmadinejad Gives Another Victory to the Israeli Right

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…olocaust—set the stage for the first act of global affirmative action: the United Nations’ vote to create the State of Israel. Had the Palestinian people accepted the UN division of Palestine, the two states that Palestinians seek today would have already been in existence. Without trying to tell the whole story, I do believe that Israel’s current policies toward the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza are cruel, repressive, and de facto…

Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

By Haroon Moghul

…ab countries. There is little Islamist fervor there, it has a large middle class, and under Mr. Ben Ali and his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, it has invested heavily in education. Not only are women not required to cover their heads, they enjoy a spectrum of civil rights, including free contraception, that are well beyond those in most countries in the region. To repeat, there’s little “Islamist fervor” in Tunisia because Islamist fervor—something…

Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…contain an outpouring of popular protest and have repeatedly called on the United States to take measures against its producers. Google’s actions raises fundamental questions about the control that Internet companies have over online expression. Should companies themselves decide what standards govern what is seen on the Internet? How consistently should these policies be applied? Under YouTube’s terms of service, hate speech must be directed agai…

Ministries of Presence: A Report from Nepal

By Cathleen Falsani

…me aboard the flight from Singapore were a few other journalists from the United States and Europe, a team from the China Lingshan International Rescue in their distinctive fire engine red uniforms, and several dozen surgeons from South Africa who had come to Nepal with Gift of the Giver organization, an NGO founded in 1992 by a Sufi sheik from Istanbul. Among us were Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains—people of good will…

Everything Was Better When We Had God In Our Schools

By Hollis Phelps

…. Barnett shot and killed another teacher, Eva C. Wiseman, in front of her class. After shooting at a pupil who came to help Miss Wiseman and wounding himself in a failed suicide attempt, he waited in the classroom until a group of farmers came to lynch him. He then ran out of the school building, grabbed a shotgun from one of the farmers and shot himself, before running away and leaping into a well where he finally drowned. The incident was likel…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

One of the assumptions behind those seeking a religious exception to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act—as well as behind religious exceptions in general—is that they are more or less exceptional. By that I mean that they are deployed in a narrow range of circumstances by a narrow range of actors who believe their religious liberty would be threatened by taking part in a specific act or service provision. Inherent in this argume…

Rep. Cleaver’s ‘Awoman’ Prayer Enrages Christian Nationalists Who Taste Their Own Medicine and Still Miss the Point

By Andrew L. Seidel

Amen and awoman. Exclusion and inclusion. Division and diversity. Religion and nonreligion. Rep. Cleaver (D-MO) ignited these flammable dichotomies delivering the House’s opening prayer for this session and ending it: “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and God known by many names and by many different faiths. Amen, and awoman.” The prayer might have been written by Saul Bellow’s Good Intentions Paving Company. But good intent…

A Muslim Reflects on Christian Theologian (and UCLA Coach) John Wooden

By Amir Hussain

I wept on Friday evening when I heard the news of the death of Coach John Wooden. I had seen him the day before at UCLA looking frail and tired after 99 good years—as long and rewarding a life as one could hope. Coach Wooden was ready for a good death, surrounded by family and friends, knowing that he would soon meet his beloved Nellie again, who had passed on some 25 years earlier. But the tears in my eyes were not for Coach; in losing him, we l…

Orthodox Rabbi Imitates Pat Robertson

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…d lesbians – and the alleged acceptance they are currently enjoying in the United States – as the cause of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Ch…

Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

The Crisis of Zionism by Peter Beinart Times Books (March 27, 2012) Embracing Israel/Palestine: A Strategy to Heal and Transform the Middle East by Michael Lerner North Atlantic Books (November 22, 2011) It’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. I know that sounds strange. Israel is once again devastating Gaza. The Palestinian death toll is rising steadily. Even the more liberal Jewish-American groups li…