Search for "what is the best site for cheap airline tickets reddit phone number 1-800-299-7264"

New Spencer Book Denies Existence of Muhammad

By Hussein Rashid

…Muhammad knew that people were making things 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 Is…

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…

NOM Claims Victimhood for the Holidays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ir intolerance of me. For those family members, ignoring them is often the best thing to do. Leave the room when they start in on you. (I told my therapist I thought this was rude, but she reminded me that if I told a family member that I didn’t want to have this conversation and they persisted, it was really the obnoxious family member who was rude and I had every right to walk away after that.) Perhaps the best thing to do this holiday season—if…

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…

“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

By Gordon Haber

…sts. My Scientology Movie is the latest from Louis Theroux, who is perhaps best known for his BBC documentaries about fringe groups like black nationalists and ultra-Zionists. Theroux’s work is ostensibly about investigating and perhaps humanizing extremism. But more often it exemplifies a kind of deadpan eccentricity-tourism associated with another British journo-entertainer, Jon Ronson. Both Ronson and Theroux specialize in pretending to take cr…

Patriotism and Piety—Not For Conservatives Only

By Ira Chernus

…aring. But it’s lousy strategy. If you want to win, you’ve got to have the best possible intelligence about what the other side is up to. Hierarchy, Loyalty, Sanctity If you listen to most conservatives, you’ll hear them saying one thing over and over: Let’s go to a religious worship service. For decades now, there’s been a clear statistical correlation: the more often you attend those services, the more likely you are to vote Republican. It’s an…

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…

Doubting Ourselves Through the AZ Shooting

By Julie Ingersoll

…certainty. A healthy dose of doubt—about our own convictions about what is best, as well as about our own understanding of our opponents’ goals and interests—won’t paralyze us into inaction but, rather, temper our approach with humility. When I recognize the limits of my own understanding, I can see value in opposing opinions as potentially leading to a better result drawn from collective wisdom. Isn’t that the idea of democracy anyway, instead of…

Is Bill Barr’s Belief in a Powerful President Actually Religious? A ‘High Papal’ Fable

By Ivan Strenski

…Holland also claims seven novels to his name, several TV documentaries, a number of radio broadcasts, a play or two, and a translation of Herodotus’s Histories, all the while holding down a staff position with The Guardian. Taken as a whole, Holland’s entire oeuvre seems a colossal myth-making enterprise geared to reintroducing the West to its own formation. Taken in itself, Dominion often maddeningly, sometimes entertainingly, rambles through tw…

Jesus Said Punch Up, Not Down: Why William Barber’s Attack on the Religious Right May Not Be What It Seems

By Daniel Schultz

…ith—that government programs are an ineffective means of poverty relief at best, and at worst, a counter-productive or even predatory response to the poor. When I say “an article of faith” here, I am not being critical: there are many American Christians who believe that taxes are theft, government hurts more than it helps, and that the right way to address poverty is through religious charity only, not public policy. People like Rev. Barber and I…