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Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…he door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out after zuhr prayer one day. There it was: a whole section with all women in it. Not wanting to get my…

Build the Muslim Community Center at Ground Zero

By Donna Schaper

…th respect and hope at its heart. What about forgiveness? It can be such a cheap word. It is obnoxious the way so many people tell other people they need to forgive the wrong done to them. Often those of us who advocate forgiveness don’t know what we are talking about. Then again, there is really no end to the suffering if we can’t forgive. There is no end game. We become hateful, the way our wrongdoers were hateful, and the victory goes to the te…

Gas For Two Bucks a Gallon? Bachmann Taps a Pipeline to the American Sacred

By Rosamond C. Rodman

…artment of Transportation closed a portion of a major highway, California I-405, for expansion, the event quickly became known as “Carmeggedon.” When a significant crack was discovered in the Sherman Minton bridge that spans the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana, causing indefinite closure of a major east-west interstate and river crossing, it wasn’t long before it came to be known as “Shermageddon.” These references reflect something larger…

An Open Letter to Black Clergy on the Disdain for Protest

By Rev. Osagyefo Sekou

…egations in the palm of your hand with rhetorical flourishes, giving a beat-down-people strength to live another day. Your words helped to re-constitute an assaulted black self—with respectability, dignity and self-determination. I studied how you mounted the sacred desk. The way that you ‘took and walked’ a text was a dissertation in performance and homiletical studies. I took avid notes. Elegant mothers wearing peacock hats; disciplined ushers,…

Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e.” “Yes,” I responded. Why? Because I saw the wonder of covenantal one man-one woman marriage. I saw the sheer delight of authentic, biblical, natural, historic, God-defined marriage. The complimentary halves of humanity coming together is simply breathtaking. Two things struck me as I read this odious message. First, what kind of blind hatred of other people would compel you to use the occasion of your wife’s death to make political hay? Rev. Ga…

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

By Chrissy Stroop

…magazine, a highly influential evangelical publication, got in on the guilt-by-association dunking: https://twitter.com/andrewtwalk/status/1496482488130191368?s=20&t=BCVMOzDYWxTc8c9hU2_7iQ One Southern Baptist pastor even used the slur “tranny” in his tweet about the situation: https://twitter.com/NateSchlomann/status/1496553688759943169 Eventually, Denny Burk, a pastor and a professor at Boyce College, the undergraduate institution associated wit…

On the 40th Anniversary of Hyde, A Theological Defense of Reproductive Justice

By Anita Little

…try exam. The other one, for whom scrambling the several hundred needed out-of-pocket was unfeasible, carried her child to term, giving birth a few weeks before prom. Their futures would only continue to diverge. For the past four decades, the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion, has made it nearly impossible for low-income women—predominantly women of color—to obtain a legal abortion. It’s the only procedure ever banned f…

Note for Today

By Amina Wadud

…e locally one needs to know about before going. In Indonesia this would be cheap so not a big deal, but who knows in Makkah and Madinah; and what about cleaning my underwear? But some of these are made from such lovely cotton, the pre-wash would just be more work for me, and not at all necessary. Then I wondered what the heck I would do with all this white when I return. Only the pant outfits will be possibly integrated into everyday wear; and hon…

Dispatches from the Election: Around the Moon, Safely

By Glenn W. Smith

…We had, I guess, been a little rebellious, though never so dangerously out-of-control as a Nixon Flu-infected media still likes to pretend. Not long after our first trips to the Moon, American soldiers shot down American students at Kent State. There was the secret bombing of Cambodia. The Watergate break-in. The first international oil embargo and the disappearance of cheap gas. The US embassy rooftop retreat in Saigon. Disco. Nixon’s resignatio…

House GOP Hires Lawyer to Prevent Federal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ehner appears ready to go to great lengths, and the great expense of a high-power law firm, to try to score some cheap political points on the backs of same-sex couples.” I suppose Boehner can pander to the religious right and continue to defend “traditional” marriage, but I think it’s fair to ask why—when jobless rates continue to hover near 10 percent—which issue may be most important to God: how people arrange their intimate relationships, or h…