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Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

These days, when ever you say you are Muslim by choice, you get people asking about your conversion. Mostly they want to know why. This curiosity comes equally from those who are already Muslim and those who are not. I used to tell the same basic steps—although I hardly think my own individual door lights up any bulbs of excitement. Maybe because no lightbulbs went off for me either. I was a seeker. I was raised in a loving Christian environment…

Is LGBT-Muslim Clash Aiding Rise of Right in Europe?

By Peter Montgomery

…isney film Beauty and the Beast are well known. Also, a surprisingly large number of politicians in Hong Kong profess to be devout Christians, although this does not of course automatically denote anti-gay or even anti-same-sex-marriage sentiment. … Moreover, it seems that Hongkongers are increasingly unlikely to be swayed by the traditionalist views of local religious authorities any time soon, given the results of a WIN/Gallup International poll…

Secularist Activists Are Being Murdered in Bangladesh: An Ongoing Crisis Causes Many to Flee

By Michael De Dora

…s inspiration—a Wahhabi version of Islam fomented in the country’s growing number of fundamentalist religious schools—the victims are not necessarily homogenous in their religious beliefs. Attacks in Bangladesh have targeted atheists and apostates, yes, but what victims have generally shared is something more fundamental: a willingness to live according to the dictates of their own consciences, and to pursue an open, pluralistic, and democratic so…

US Offers Help For Investigation of Bangladesh Killings

By Peter Montgomery

…l—the Muslim eastern half and the Jewish western half—have in common large numbers of socially conservative residents who look down on homosexuality. “In the west, you have Orthodox Jews, and in the east you have Arabs—and the Arabs are so homophobic,” says Khaled Alqam, a gay Arab, while sitting under a heater on the patio of the Video Pub in Jerusalem. “They think if you’re gay, you’re a spy.” According to the story, the bar is attracting straig…

Emanuel’s Pulse: A Plea for Black Church–LGBTIQ Solidarity

By J. Kameron Carter

Early Sunday morning I woke up, my phone abuzz with news. Reading about the shooting in Orlando, worry and fright overcame me. Still in a semi-wake, semi-sleep, semi-dream state, I thought it was Charleston all over again. Emanuel AME redux. My partner saw my face and asked what had happened. We turned on the television to learn that a man named Omar Mateen had entered a popular gay nightclub on its “Latin Night.” Using an AR-15 assault rifle and…

“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

By Max Zahn

…on the employee to relieve all her stress through self-development? The answer is compassion. I’m hoping that if you could always include kindness and compassion in the mindfulness curriculum, people will become even more aware of their own suffering and the suffering of those around them. If nobody complains about stress, they don’t do anything. What if everybody is aware, “Oh my gosh, we have all this stress?”—an awareness that comes from mindf…

Sacred Geography: A Queer Latino Theological Response to Orlando

By Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez

…n route to the Pride event in West Hollywood. As I watched the Los Angeles SWAT team and armored vehicles cruising up and down the LA Pride parade route a couple hours later, my heart broke and my body ached. I walked along the route and saw the same anti-gay protestors who show up every year. Yesterday, they were behind two sets of barriers with a squad of SWAT officers next to them. And as I stood across from them, listening to their loud condem…

Terror In South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…ow what happened to Walter Scott is because a bystander filmed it with his phone. In making his plea, Pinckney invoked the biblical story of Doubting Thomas, the one of Jesus’s disciples who would not believe Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw him with his own eyes and touched his wounds with his own hands. “It was only when he was able to do that, he said, ‘I believe,’” Pinckney said of Thomas. Some people, said Pinckney, are like Thomas…

Pope’s ‘Joy of Love’ Brings Little Joy To LGBT Catholics; Gay Atheist Malaysian Granted Refugee Status In Canada; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s, in our phones. We hold a whole world of difference every time we open a phone. And the response to in the world around is at best insult, and so often violence, a reality which is the living experience of many you here. Welby also addressed a January gathering of Primates, which voted to suspend the Episcopal Church from questions on doctrine or policy for three years because of its move to bless same-sex unions. Scotland: More Gay Politicians,…

Thank You Breitbart, For The Islam

By Haroon Moghul

…Pakistani-Americans? This isn’t really a question the essay sets out to answer, but it’s revealing, isn’t it? American Islam is tremendously variegated, as indeed is the conservative movement, as the essay itself reveals. But do all American Muslims cluster together, culturally and politically, because they are Muslim? Is their (our/my) Islam more important than anything else? The point comes out more forcefully here: Read this again. “Culture is…