Religion Dispatches
…est is full of extremist immigrant Muslim communities whose aim is to drag western Muslim women back into the Dark Ages as soon as they establish themselves the West. Her paragraph forgets the women’s networks and progressive Muslim coalitions that work to fight the multiple oppressions and difficulties that both home-grown and immigrant Muslim women face. Western Muslim communities are similar to those in predominantly Muslim countries in that th…
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…me—the fourth Western-led war against a country that was itself created by Western colonialism—and the results have been disastrous; we had no plan of action beyond booting out the dictator we once backed. More war broke out, involving uprisings, insurgencies, ethnic cleansings and sectarian jihadism in its ugliest incarnation yet. America’s power in the world has dramatically declined, and some conservative commentators seem to believe the way to…
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…e President is given some introduction and instruction on the holy site by Western Wall rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch and Western Wall Heritage Foundation director Mordechai Eliav. After some urging, he walks slowly—solemnly?—to the wall, where he raises his right hand and presses it against the stone. We, as viewers, hear the staccato buzz of camera shutters as Trump seems to stare ahead, head unbowed, swaying backwards and forward in what looks like…
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…research is unpopular given the mood of toleration lingering in the world today. However, Cameron hopes that his ideas might find supporters in Russia.” Only the liberal Snob.ru had the guts to assess Cameron accurately, laying out many of the same relevant facts about his (lack of) credentials laid out above. “A Witch-Hunter from Overseas,” ran the headline. “Paul Cameron came to Moscow as a scholar, a scientist, and an expert on family matters,…
Read More…ate. They are hermetic. They practice yoga—the kind without spandex. Their Western-identified religious leader has been described as a teddy bear. Our culture clings to this transnational re-appropriation of the Asian religion, soaking up the Buddhist sunshine. Even the New York Times article, reporting on the recent conflict, depicts a group of monks praying together, under the headline that uses “clash” and “crisis,” in contrast with a recent Ne…
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…r, the one who will take Islam from yesterday and bring it acceptably into today. This nicely and additionally explains the unthinking references in our popular media to terms like “the international community”—whereby a certain understanding of the West is rendered conclusive and global. But history is not so determined. What then would happen then if, while such commentators insist on the obligation of Islam’s conformity to the Western way, alte…
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…ust acknowledge the extent to which an insane lust for mineral wealth is a Western phenomenon, albeit one that is now fully emulated by the Chinese. I will step right into what, in this case, is a helpful and illuminating cliché. Westerners made a horrible Faustian bargain in assuming that we had an unlimited right to extract wealth from the bowels of the earth, using almost unlimited violence to unleash vast mineral power that we use in turn to s…
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…e transition from a culturally specific depiction of Jesus as white within Western Europe, to the emergence of Jesus as a “white god” occurred during the period of Native American dispossession, African enslavement, and later during the era of colonization of Africa and Asia. The transformation of ancient and medieval color symbolism into racial discrimination and prejudice didn’t require graphic depictions of the divine, as David M. Goldenberg as…
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…felt strongly that the book needed to remain focused on the scene as it is today in order to keep the narrative flow and make it as accessible as possible. Judging by the final product, it was a good move, but the historian in me always wants to dig deeper and share that history as widely as possible. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? I would think the biggest one is that something as seemingly American or Western as he…
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…walk in, the neighborhoods they live in, their schools and hospitals—is a Western world that enfolds Muslims with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, and the rest. In our ordinary lives, most of us are at home with Muslims and Islam. What alternative title would you give the book? “There is No Clash of Civilizations.” I thought of calling it that, but the book goes beyond that into the significance of the Western debates and…
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