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The Real Context Of The “Taliban Dan” Ad

By Julie Ingersoll

…AlterNet, Bruce Wilson writes that Gothard wanted to use Christian Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony’s seminal Institutes of Biblical Law for his programs if it weren’t for their disagreement over divorce. In his post, Wilson focuses too much on the issue of the capital offenses for which some Reconstructionists advocate stoning. That emphasis favors sensationalism over more pressing issues in our political culture — like the fact that this wing o…

Did The “Taliban Dan” Ad “Backfire?”

By Sarah Posner

…ional Association of Character Cities. As I noted there, even Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of the evangelical world, has expressed dismay over the “alarming” nature of Gothard’s teachings on authority, and allegations of physical and emotional abuse in his programs. (For the most comprehensive treatment of the IACC, see Silja J.A. Talvi’s 2006 piece in In These Times.) Politico claims this morning that the Grayson ad “backfired.” If i…

Andy Stern, Anti-Idolatrous Prophet

By Daniel Schultz

Who knew? Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union who now sits on President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said the United States needs an economic plan that does not include “worshipping” the free market. “America needs a 21st century economic plan because we now know the market-worshipping, privatizing, de-regulating, dehumanizing American financial plan has failed and should ne…

French “Burqa Ban”: It’s Not About Religion

By Amina Wadud

…ce been a part of. I wanted a partition between myself and the rest of the world. All of it. It’s like taking literally the spiritual implication of the statement “be in the world but not of it.” I did not go out of my home very much either. I didn’t want to. I had read Maulana Maududi’s book called Purdah. He recommends face veiling as part of protecting Muslim women from non-Muslims, men and women. How could a good Muslim woman mingle with those…

Travel Truths

By Amina Wadud

…o feel like I’m in high school. Let me remind you, this does not happen in international airports the world over. I and every feeble-on-their-feet person gets to keep our shoes on. I get to keep all my clothes on, including both scarves, even though one is not even covering anything I wish to observe discretion about. Like poverty, in America, some people have to suffer an attack on their dignity and this is legitimated by the nature of the instit…

Ultra Orthodox Murder-Suicide Makes Headlines

By Shalom Goldman

…ing on whether one counts those Jews settled in what was until 1967 Arab Jerusalem.) In the first decades after the June 1967 War, the ideological spearhead of the Jewish settler movement was Gush Emunim (the bloc of the faithful). These settlers were religious Zionists: Modern Orthodox Jews adhering to a worldview that saw Zionism and Judaism as inseparable. They are not the Haredi (“Trembling”) Jews of ultra-Orthodoxy. Ultra-Orthodox life in the…

The Week in Religion, Poetically:

By Michael J. Altman

…religious charities. It remains to be seen how happy folks will be about “International Blasphemy Rights Day.” The September 30th event is being organized by the Center for Inquiry, a New York based atheist group. Got a problem? No time for church? Try drive-thru prayer . A 24-foot cross in Vermont pits local land-use law against claims of First Amendment Rights. And a bomb threat on Sunday at the shrine in Lourdes, France evacuated some 30,000 p…

Misusing Cesar Chavez in Immigration Debate

By Luis Leon

…havez terminated the fast—his longest ever at thirty-six days, a duration trumping even those undergone by Gandhi, his Indian guru. Like Gandhi, Chavez staged three public fasts, including the “Love Fast,” begun on February 14, 1968, which ended twenty-five days later with an ecumenical mass in which he broke bread with Robert Kennedy. Each of Chavez’s three public rituals was dubbed a “spiritual fast,” during which he took communion from priests…

Are Scientists Ethical?

By Arri Eisen

…teaching them over a decade ago) scoff and say ‘you can’t teach ethics’. True, we can’t teach the few bad apples to be ethical, but we do make young scientists aware of what constitutes ethical behavior, how to identify and deal with ethically gray situations, and what to do about reporting unethical ones. Perhaps it was this established educational infrastructure that allowed the Hauser situation to be addressed now rather than having its ethica…

Creating a Cell: Science Plays God

By Arri Eisen

…play God’ all the time, every day (from the design, testing, and using of drugs to handing down court decisions); such new organisms need to be strictly regulated and monitored, easily traceable, and tested in the external environment, because they always do eventually enter it; the government, industry, universities, and scientists at the federal and international level should be and are discussing and monitoring such issues; Homeland Security sh…