Religion Dispatches
…y From the view of Islamic law, writes Umar Chapra, a leading economist in Saudi Arabia, “while economic growth is essential, it is not sufficient for attaining real human well-being.” Rather, we depend on “spiritual health at the core of human consciousness, and justice and fair play at all levels of human interaction.” Much more than a business model for specialty banks, he and many others believe that Islamic economics offers a much wider visio…
Read More…, Bangladesh, where LGBT activists were hacked to death two months ago and Saudi Arabia, where human rights violations regularly make international headlines. The abstention made clear two things. One, that the government doesn’t see its LGBT population as equal citizens and views the violence faced by them as a non-issue. This is part of a broader pattern that has seen the Narendra Modi government not back any LGBT-friendly resolution in the UN i…
Read More…in Alexandria, Virginia, called it “the protocols of the learned elders of Saudi Arabia,” when I interviewed him for a story I wrote two years ago. In that story, I reported on how the Clarion Fund was founded by officials with the ultra-orthodox Jewish group Aish HaTorah, although Ronn Torossian, the group’s spokesperson, denied official involvement. (Torossian represents other right-wing religious individuals and organizations; after the Washing…
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…. Even Salafis escape easy characterization. America’s oldest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, which implements and exports the type of Salafi Islam we’re so alarmed by. So what kinds of Salafis can we live with, and who would we prefer to live without? Salafis in Egypt are hard to pin down, too. Does their conservative theology make them politically dangerous, or politically irrelevant? Today, we’d guess the former. But prior to January 25, 2011, leadi…
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…in the states that are the most likely to criminalize the practice? Don’t bet on it. And certainly don’t bet on the bishops threatening to withhold communion from a politician over it. No follow-up questions, please A third trend: as many of the examples above show, anti-abortion “centrists” are a little too coy about what they’re willing to accept in order to maintain the criminalization of abortion. This is especially important to me because th…
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…Improving educator training so they can do this effectively? Absolutely. I bet more Americans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric w…
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…efforts by proving that children raised by intact mom-and-dad families do better than kids raised by two loving moms or dads. It won’t matter that the study didn’t do that. Blamers Also a safe bet: natural disasters like Hurricane-Superstorm Sandy will continue to be chalked up to God’s anger at the advance of gay rights. So will tragedies like the mass murder of students and educators at Sandy Hook elementary school. But those blamers will sound…
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…happiness achieve it. But there’s a tension in the natural order of things between what promotes happiness and what morality demands. Hence, unless there is a supernatural order of things bringing happiness to the morally good, the highest good is little more than a pipe dream. But reason demands that it be more than a pipe dream. And so reason demands that we posit a supernatural power. Put simply, we have to suppose that moral heroes who risk th…
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…a might result in a sense of physical and emotional freedom. What could be better? Hell, they might make it as far as throwing off their yoke and joining the ranks of the liberated. Swimming is probably the best form of cardiovascular exercise for almost everyone, including individuals with depression, obesity, arthritis, diabetes, and various age-related ailments. Unlike jogging, it does not cause strain to your joints. Water calms you. Swimming…
Read More….” Lavie added that he had discovered, from conversations with former Shin Bet and Mossad espionage agency personnel, that their organizations had also seen the same disparity between oral and written doctrine, which had helped deepen the mistaken conception. In this way, one initial assumption based on quicksand gives rise to a concatenating series of mistaken judgments. Each judgment leads to one of greater import and severity. Before long, you…
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