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Who (or What) are Sarah Palin’s Prayer Warriors?

By Sarah Posner

…and superficial treatment of Palin’s religion. Gross devotes a few hundred words out of the 10,000 word piece to what he portrays as Palin’s belief about “Angels and Demons.” He writes that instead of hunkering down and learning policy, she read emails from “prayer warriors” on her Blackberry. On the eve of her debate with Joe Biden, he tells us, she read an email from evangelist Lou Engle telling her it was her “Esther moment” and “your identity…

Obama to Cave on Bush Tax Cuts: Letter to the Washingtonians, Chapter 1

By Daniel Schultz

…born, though I did not know him at the time. His mother, poor, ill, and struggling with drugs and booze, lost him and his sister to the county some time later. I doubt very much that as she sank into the arms of addiction that she took notice of one election after another, of one economic setback after another, of torture and Katrina and corruption and the undermining of civil liberties. I am sure that she had no idea that Democrat after Democrat…

The Magic of the Higgs Boson Particle

By Yoni Pasternak

…tiful is the universe I have made. Language is generally utilitarian: construct a word too bulky or a concept too vague and, unless it has other redemptive linguistic goods to offer, it is unlikely to be adopted. And if a word or concept already adopted is deemed inconvenient or impractical by a large enough section of a linguistic community, it will likely fall into disuse. From the looks of the (impressionistic) evidence cited above, it seems th…

May GOP Save Us From Chaos: Mircea Eliade on Election 2010

By Ira Chernus

…than most of my readers suspected.) But as soon as the economic collapse struck, the economy replaced “terrorism” as the greatest source of threatening chaos. McCain’s response struck voters as rather chaotic, while Obama gave off an image of solid stability. That’s when he started pulling ahead, and that’s the main reason he won the presidency. So what happened since Obama took office? Not enough, in terms of economic recovery. He no longer looks…

Hijab: Culture, Custom, and Chaos

By Amina Wadud

…whole bab, book/chapter, in the hadith volumes, hijab or any of the other words have very obscure (then overused, or overrated) mostly a single hadith not found in the two major sahih volumes, Bukhari and Muslim. So how we get from little or no emphasis to a whole tariqah or madh-hab, well that is where we are. Dress matters. And anything that matters that much is surely the thing we do not want to have other people’s opinions or control over. It…

How Not to Talk to the NAACP

By Joanna Brooks

…the Houston NAACP crowd a warmed-over stump speech. In which he used the word “Obamacare.” Which we all know is a fighting word, even if you follow it with a quote from Frederick Douglass. What happened to the part about “who I truly am in my heart”? There was no real graciousness today, and there were no risks taken. Except showing up at the NAACP convention, which pretty much every GOP presidential candidate does, and should. After all, there…

Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

…says, “There can be no compulsion in religion.” Then it goes on to say, “Truth is manifestly evident from Falsehood.” For sure, Truth cannot be forced. What is more, a person cannot see if not with complete volition; otherwise, it is just corruption. Coercion then, is antithetical to faith. I have only greater love for any perspective of faith that one attains to work by actions of devotion for the coherence they perceive in the Universe. The onl…

Chris Christie Apologizes. . . For Saying Something True

By Sarah Posner

…ement.” Note here that Christie, aside from his use of the forbidden (but true) word “occupied,” expressed no sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Here’s the full context: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.” Got that? Using the word “occupied” overshadows that what Christie took away from the experience was t…

Those Cocky Secular Liberals!

By Sarah Posner

…it [is] abomination.” Yet this is a thoroughly misleading rendition of the word toevah, which, while we may not know exactly what it means, definitely does not mean “abomination.” * * * * Now, if by “abomination,” the King James means a cultural prohibition—something which a particular culture abhors but another culture enjoys—then the term makes sense. But in common parlance, the term has come to mean much more than that. Today, it connotes somet…

Rites, Rituals, and the King

By Amina Wadud

…e is one of surrender. We are also khalifah, or agent, representative and trustee. This is our relationship to Allah’s Jamal attributes or her rubbubiyyah. In this, our proper posture is active engagement in all aspects of life. This engagement should manifest our inner states of surrender (this is for all our actions, not just in worship or ibadah, but also in our mu’amalat). There’s a Sufi image of these two postures, like a ball, the top half f…