Religion Dispatches
…g classrooms and rituals of community life, on the courage and goodness of New Yorkers, and on the horrific event that has shaped a generation of American Muslim life. Hussein Rashid_________ September 11, 2001. The day I became Muslim. That’s a lie. I am now a Muslim. I was not always. America made me Muslim. I was born into a Muslim family. Like all good children of immigrants, I rebelled. By the time I was 16, I was a firm Marxist, rejecting…
Read More…No, we can’t say exactly why or how it won’t ban birth control pills, but trust us because BABIES!” Anyway, Mason says the fight for zygote personhood will continue in other states. And then there’s pro-life activist Susan Tyrrell, whose argument seems to amount to this: God says things in the Bible. (Interpretation? Don’t be ridiculous.) The things God says should be the law. Those who don’t agree are part of the kingdom of Satan. Well, look, at…
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…pro-choice advocates. Dr. Patrick Johnson, a key organizer with Personhood USA, writing on the conservative website WorldNetDaily: “The advocates of the Heartbeat Bill have proven their willingness to push one person out of the boat to try to save another. How? By way of the bill’s exceptions, its inappropriate penalties, and its counterfeit moral standard.” Phil Burress, a supporter of the Heartbeat Bill and member of the Ohio Pro Life Action exe…
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…hich included lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics from around New York and the five dioceses in New Jersey. “I am your brother, as a disciple of Jesus. I am your brother, as a sinner who finds mercy with the Lord.” The welcoming of a group of openly gay people to Mass by a leader of Cardinal Tobin’s standing in the Roman Catholic Church in this country would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But Cardinal Tobin, whom Pope Fran…
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…and homosexuality itself as treason. We are two activists, from Cairo and New York respectively, who know the Egyptian situation well. While this panic might seem like an outbreak of collective insanity, our experiences—and recent history—confirm it’s not. Egypt’s persecution of LGBTQ people is a calculated strategy. (It imitates an equally political campaign against gays launched in 2001 by the Mubarak dictatorship, this time on a vaster scale.)…
Read More…irst is whether, when you dig below the surface, Francis has done anything new or whether the media is once again being overly generous in its reading of the pope’s progressivism. Because despite the headlines suggesting a major change in how the church handles abortion by giving priests during the jubilee “Year of Mercy” the “authority” to forgive women who’ve had abortions, the change is more a matter of PR than church policy. The Catholic Churc…
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…ho have served in the territories speak for themselves about the level of brutality and wanton cruelty there. They are not refuseniks. Most of them return to the Israel Defense Forces every year for reserve duty. They want their own society to wake up to what Israeli soldiers are being asked to do and, sadly, what some of them eagerly volunteer to do. In the organization’s traveling exhibitions and on its Web site are firsthand reports of soldiers…
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…to operate like gears of a mechanism, the smoother their deadly work could run. The Prussian army’s 1726 manual divided the process of loading and firing a musket into 76 separate stages. Commanders drilled such precision into their soldiers with minute efficiency, teaching them to march in geometric columns (at exactly 75 steps per minute) against the enemy’s geometric fortifications. King Frederick the Great’s army could fire sustained volleys w…
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…pathetic and egotistical. It has a form of godliness. In an article in the New York Times’ real estate section a few months ago (in a column devoted to “untold stories of real estate envy, excess and woe”) President Jones was quoted using language reminiscent of Franklin: We’re a New York City institution. And we have a New York City-sized problem. But fortunately we also have a New York City-sized answer. God is calling us to have another 100 yea…
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…on Swift/Kelce hysteria with conspiracies that probably argue that Elon’s latest chip implant turns you into a Swiftie, and the center/pop-culture news is hyper-focused on whether they’re in the same stadium together, some on the Left are critiquing their silence—especially Swift’s—on global issues like genocide. The Right’s misguided paranoia about Swift potentially speaking up puts her in a powerful position, where her silence continues to whip…
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