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Why President Obama Should Not Visit the Western Wall

By Melissa Weininger

…ge and worship, one of the holiest places on earth for Jews. Since the Six-Day War in 1967, the Western Wall and the area around it has been under Israeli control. Today, the Wall and the area nearby, including the plaza in front of it, is administered by the Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites of Israel, Shmuel Rabinowitz. The Rabbi of the Western Wall, like other local rabbis in Israel, is a state appointee, an employee of the Ministry…

Islam in Conflict with Democracy? A Response to Stanley Fish

By David True

The State of Oklahoma overwhelmingly supported Measure 755 in last week’s elections, forbidding the use of international and Shari’ah law in state courts. A week earlier, literary theorist Stanley Fish penned a piece for the New York Times exploring the conflicts that emerge when Muslim immigrants to Western nations “evidence a desire to order their affairs, especially domestic affairs, by Shari’ah law rather than by the supposedly neutral law of…

As a Muslim, I am Exhausted…

By Nabil Echchaibi

…by Ben Affleck’s brave standoff with Bill Maher and Sam Harris on HBO last week during which the Hollywood actor and director exposed the racist paranoia of a persistent chorus of Islamophobia that both Maher and Harris fully embrace (watch it here). Islam bashing has indeed become so ridiculous that a group of Muslim Redditors recently retorted with a mocking campaign they called, “As a Muslim, I condemn Ebola.” But it’s not the Afflecks or the M…

Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

By Max Zahn

…n a practitioner’s experience in cultivating the technique. But for modern-day meditators, instructed in the benefit of practicing just five minutes per day, this appeal to long-cultivated expertise means little. The aims of contemporary mindfulness are very different, too. “The way mindfulness is practiced, it’s not necessarily Buddhism,” said Reverend Toshikazu Kenjitsu Nakagaki, president of the Buddhist Council of New York. “It’s used to impro…

Promise Keepers 2.0: Women and Jews Invited

By J. Terry Todd

…ion, and evangelical nationalism for a post-9/11 world. On Friday and Saturday of last week, Coach Bill McCartney, who founded Promise Keepers nearly twenty years ago, brought thousands of guys back to Folsom Field at the University of Colorado in Boulder, site of the first stadium rally in 1992. Back then, the event’s motto was, “What Makes a Man?” The question set the stage for years of ministry targeted exclusively to men: grandfathers, dads, t…

Religious Traditionalists Resist Marriage Equality, Artist Questions What Is “Un-African” & More in This Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to Islam. Yemen: ‘The secret life of a lonely gay Christian in Yemen’ The Week highlighted “The secret life of a lonely gay Christian in Yemen,” published on Narratively by Maria de la Guardia two weeks ago. The subject of the profile is identified as Nader, a pseudonym: A resident of Aden, a regional capital in southern Yemen, Nader converted to Christianity from Islam more than two decades ago. He is also gay. “In Yemeni society I wish people w…

Red Riding Hood Arouses Man’s Inner (Were)Wolf

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…endered her even more enchanting. And that was what she was wearing on the day her mother sent her on her fabled errand: to bring cakes and butter to her reportedly-ill grandmother. The girl met the wolf on the way, but he was afraid to kill her there, for fear of the armed woodcutters all around them in the forest. He proposed a race to her grandmother’s house and took the shorter road himself. He knocked, pretended to be the girl. The unsuspecti…

On the 20th Anniversary of Waco

By Kate Blanchard

…erable in the same way the first followers did. Buddhists, Muslims, Latter-Day Saints, and now even Unification Church members can also, like Christians, take comfort in the fact that their founders can no longer disappoint or embarrass them. Increasingly covered by ever-thickening layers of time, these charismatic persons will never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise child…

It’s the Year of the Protester: Would Santa Occupy? How About Mother Teresa?

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…sticking within my own tradition of Christianity since it’s the one I know best and since I don’t like plundering other people’s belief systems for levity. But I’m eager to hear suggestions. _____________________ Saint Nicholas Saint Nicholas (late thrd/early fourth centuries CE) was a bishop in Myra, modern-day Turkey. One of his earliest reported miracles involved his intercession for the hungry people of Myra. There were some ships carrying gra…

What was Pants to Church Sunday Really About?

By Joanna Brooks

…e spiritual lives of Mormon men and women. It’s a conversation restarted today. Even as the day’s events left many rank and file Mormons scratching their heads and admitting that they have no idea what Mormon feminism is really about. This is a great time to learn. To learn more about what Wear Pants to Church Day was really about, please read this and this and this and this. And to learn about what Mormon feminists care about and what they mean…