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Doubting Ourselves Through the AZ Shooting

By Julie Ingersoll

…at that’s what people on “my side” do too. To make it worse, even when the best of our leaders assert that “both sides do it and it needs to stop,” our media culture is so divided that most of us couldn’t come up with examples of our own side “doing it.” I find appalling the way that Sarah Palin talks about “re-loading” in the face of criticism and even more so the target map circulated by her PAC that received so much coverage this past weekend d…

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

By Haroon Moghul

…background, because it provides the context for perspectives that are sometimes wrongly presented as timeless. But the questions relevant to the lives of ordinary Western Muslims today do not concern their superiority or inferiority in relation to other faiths—still less, the management of a medieval empire. The fundamental challenge is the same one that everyone else faces: how best to live alongside people who hold different beliefs. That call…

Patriotism and Piety—Not For Conservatives Only

By Ira Chernus

…e religiosity-conservatism link has held in the past through economic good times and bad. And if higher income levels correlate with more frequent worship attendance (as Charles Murray, most famously, claims), the mystery deepens—the people who are best insulated from the economic shocks of the last four years and have the least reason to punish Obama are most likely to vote against him. Might religiosity be an independent variable, one that can o…

“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

By Gordon Haber

…or while allowing the audience to feel exactly that. The fringe group this time, obviously, is Scientology. The conceit of My Scientology Movie is that because Theroux couldn’t get anyone from the church to talk to him, he decides to investigate “the spirit of Scientology” by hiring actors to re-enact moments from church history, most notably the violent tirades of its current leader, David Miscavige. To make his fake movie, Theroux elicits the he…

Tucson, Like All Tragedy, is for Adults

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…District Court Judge John Roll was 63; why not imagine him as the arbiter best suited to give voice to the political meaning of Tucson? Dorothy “Dot” Morris was 76; so was Dorwin Stoddard. Phyllis Scheck was 79. Bill Badger, the man who first wrestled Jared Lee Loughner to the ground even after he had been shot himself, was 74. Even Gifford’s assistant, Gabriel “Gabe” Zimmermann, was 30. This was not a young crowd. But Christina Taylor Green was…

New Research May Explain the Weakness of Centrism and the Religious Left

By Daniel Schultz

…left-blogdom in the last fifteen years, as I do. What we cynics have seen time after time is Republicans playing the fear card, smearing their opponents with connections to everything from terrorism to racial conflict to sexual predation in women’s bathrooms. And it works! There are limits, but in general, the GOP has managed to parlay an unpopular agenda into stunning political gains and holds. Democrats haven’t completely eschewed negative part…

Hearts and (Versus?) Minds: Bachmann’s Ultrasound Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ng to Bachmann, the goal here is to make sure that the woman has “the very best information with which to make that decision.” (Good thing she’s still about leaving the decision up to the woman, because otherwise she might be disheartened by evidence suggesting that viewing an ultrasound makes little difference in the outcome of that decision.) Yes, that’s the line on ultrasound bills. They give women some sort of necessary information. But why do…

My Childhood Hobby Was Satanic, Or So They Told Me

By Joseph Laycock

…re beset at every turn by demonic forces and evil conspiracies. Despite my best intentions, some people may find these ideas offensive and feel that either their religion or their hobby has been slighted. But I think most readers will find this book interesting and thought provoking. What alternative title would you give the book? For a while my working title was “What The Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Religion and Other Imagined…

Pelosi Attacker’s New Age Spirituality and Belief in QAnon is no Contradiction

By Susannah Crockford

…nudity activist, about her upcoming wedding (at which DePape was to be the best man). In that article, it states that DePape made hemp jewelry for a living. Associating with nudity activists, particularly Taub, seems to locate DePape in San Francisco hippie culture. Taub is a self-described rebel, Deadhead, and homeschool mom with a school bus who met her husband Jaymz Smith at a Rainbow Gathering and saw him as the reincarnation of her previous h…

New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

By Hussein Rashid

…ings up and created checks and the best methodology that they could at the time to stop it. Modern scholars are revisiting the existing corpus with new tools and methods. Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus. Stumped by this one. No idea what it refers to. How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Islamic account of the life of the prophet…