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Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…ed as part of an amoral Western cultural and political onslaught on the non-Western world. More recently, the foolhardy attempt to forcibly impose “democracy” through the barrel of a gun in Iraq and elsewhere under Western military occupation has unfortunately tainted this term in a negative vein. In conscious opposition to hardline Islamists who have relentlessly propagated the idea that “democracy”—mired in the cultural and political baggage of…

The End of Carson?

By Sarah Posner

…nk like Marco Rubio. His entire campaign is built on his biography as a God-fearing, America-loving success story with a calm and soothing demeanor. Now he’s fighting with the press, claiming that he did try to stab a friend (or relative) and confirming doubts about his claimed interactions with a high-ranking military officer and the nation’s most prestigious military academy. That would undermine any presidential candidate’s standing, but especi…

African Religious leaders complain about Obama advocacy for LGBT rights; Ultra-Orthodox Man Stabs Jerusalem Pride Parade Marchers, Again; Struggles over sexuality in Islam, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican Churches; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…de celebration, which will run concurrently with the country’s Emancipation and Independence celebrations from August 1-8. …

No Virginia, There’s No “Clash of Civilizations”

By Anne Norton

…y worried not about problems in the Muslim world but about problems in the West. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? That depends on the reader. The message to leave with is the message in the final chapter: there is no “clash of civilizations.” There are clashes in civilizations and clashes between people who come from different traditions and cultures, but there is no cosmic battle between Islam and the West. The message tha…

A Tiny Little Mecca for
the West

By Haroon Moghul

…tes and subalterns. Rather, Bosnia’s made of very old cultures sitting side-by-side; Sarajevo was, for good reasons, called Europe’s Jerusalem—a place where the Abrahamic faiths mingled in a historic proximity alien to modern Europe. Would that it could be that way again. On trips such as these, I often meet spiritual seekers. In its history, and destiny, I can see tiny Bosnia becoming a home for many such Western Muslims, ourselves small in numbe…

Dispatches From the Site of a Massacre

By Haroon Moghul

…ndo. It might also nuance our picture of the Muslim world. A land of mosque-going, blond-haired, blue-eyed Slavs seems a bit too fantastic for me to believe except without seeing it. Muslims too have a tendency to racialize themselves: We’re brown and black, Asian and African, but rarely white—and European only with difficulty. Many Muslims view the Middle East, sometimes defined generously to include Berbers, Turks, or South Asians, as a kind of…

Gluttons for Jesus

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ht more effectively with the support of a group. Aside from that, however, West’s head-spinning jump from Amen’s “our only hope lies in ‘community,’” to a rant about big government shows a deep misunderstanding of Christianity. American Christians have so reduced the religion to individual salvation that we can’t even talk about coming together as a community without someone screaming about socialists and big government. Jesus never talked about “…

To: Discovery Institute;
Re: Creationist Tactics Pre-Dating the Exposure of ID as a Fraud

By Lauri Lebo

…esearch—a topic I’ll revisit soon. This week, DI fellow and spokesman John West is upset over the fact that I didn’t appropriately credit those at Discovery for their creationist tactics. West objects to this paragraph: As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.” His argument…

‘Leaving is Never So Simple as Stepping Over a Line’ — A Conversation with the Author of ‘Rift,’ a New Memoir on Christian Patriarchy

By Audrey Clare Farley

…s of her upbringing, including myths about rape and contraception, the stay-at-home daughter movement, how she managed to heal, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. One of the book’s persistent themes is that of a voyeuristic father-God who surveys not only your neckline, but also your every thought. You write, “Dad was always watching, which meant God was always watching.” What effect do you think this voyeuristic conc…

Opening the Door to Hell: Jewish Terrorism in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…possible.” Back on August 31, a few days before the opening of the current American-led Middle East peace talks in Washington, four Israelis were killed by Hamas operatives in the West Bank—among them a pregnant woman. Clearly, this didn’t bode well for the future of the talks, about which there was already a great deal of skepticism. But the Obama Administration, defying the odds, has soldiered on with the negotiations and done so despite the set…