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Will the Taliban Actually Remain Somewhat Moderate This Time?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…ddenly retreat during the fall of Saigon. During that memorable scramble in 1975, US diplomats had to evacuate the embassy via helicopters that landed on the roof as the North Vietnamese army tanks literally broke down the Embassy gates. The airport was out of commission since the North Vietnamese military had attacked it, and in fact the last American soldiers to lose their lives in the war were defending the airport. After that last helicopter f…

Stem Cell Chronicles: Why Politics and Science Most Certainly Should Not Be Separated

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…rbing ways. And it carried a cost; the Bush administration created a great flight of scientists to the private sector, to foreign countries, and it decimated the morale at some of the premier scientific institutions funded by the US government, the Centers for Disease Control most notably. But the President is wrong to suggest that politics can simply be extracted from scientific enquiry. This simple statement is actually part of much larger misun…

Doonesbury Cartoons Cause Controversy, But for Wrong Reasons

By Sarah Posner

…bortion provider, the patient’s medical history, or—for a relatively small number of women—an aversion to the transvaginal method. Most of the time, however, the transvaginal ultrasound is a useful and common tool that helps providers perform abortions safely and well. As Joffe points out, soon after the transvaginal-as-rape meme took flight, “Will abortion clinic staff who perform the ultrasound be seen as ‘rapists,’ as the provider I mentioned e…

Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

By Haroon Moghul

…ff its nauseating government; in 2008’s Press Freedom Index, Tunisia ranked 164th out of 178 countries. Culturally, Tunisia appeared to have gone in all the right directions, so why had it politically failed? And why didn’t we expect it? It’s because of this mind-map: If an Arab/Muslim is culturally Western, he is naturally in favor of democracy; if culturally other, he is some kind of authoritarian. I’m saying this because of the New York Times’…

RDPulpit: Ahmadinejad Gives Another Victory to the Israeli Right

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…that led to the flight of some one million Jews from Arab countries between 1947 and 1967. When Prime Minister Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and other right-wing extremists are able to point to this irrational hatred of the Jewish people as the “real” underlying message of the critics of The Occupation, they stir up fears among Israelis that seem to be rationally founded, given the hatred being expressed. All the more so when one witnesses the str…

Pope Benedict’s 2006 Islamophobia Controversy Wasn’t an Isolated Incident — Islamophobia is an Integral Part of His Theological Legacy

By Wendy Mallette

…athers, Benedict contends that the Logos—the divine Word made flesh—in John 1 proves the “inalienable right of Greek thought to a place in Christianity.” While Benedict’s claims about compatibility between Greek philosophy and Christian faith aren’t particularly controversial, his insistence on a unique alliance between Greek thought and Christianity sets the theological backdrop for the Islamophobia and Euro-Christian supremacy seen across his la…

Rick Warren Gives Pre-Inauguration Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church

By Michael A. Elliott

…hecking their watches, making sure that they wouldn’t miss their afternoon flights to Reagan National. Warren, the Goofy, Goateed High School English Teacher Finally, after more than two hours of tracing the path from the bus boycott to “Yes, we can,” it was Warren time. To his credit, Farris introduced Warren by addressing directly the controversies surrounding his stands against same-sex marriage and abortion. He noted that Warren’s stances on p…

Mexican Marriage Marches Show Struggle Between Church and Secular State; Pro-LGBT Mormon Group Grows After ‘Apostate’ Declaration; Botswana Gives Anti-Gay US Pastor the Boot; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ic Church, which opposes such unions. Chile, which returned to democracy in 1990 after a brutal 17-year military dictatorship, is by many measures Latin America’s most economically developed country, but is less socially progressive than many of its neighbors. In 2004, it became the last country in the Western Hemisphere to legalize divorce, and it is one of the few that still outlaws abortions in all cases – something that center-left Bachelet is…

“We Found My Father, Except for His Hand”

By Haroon Moghul

…y of their places of murder. What would I have found in Srebrenica? But my flight arrived too late. Although we had access, we would’ve arrived well after the commemorations, and may have missed the chance to meet the people who needed to be talked to—by then many would’ve been on the return trip to Sarajevo. More than that, in the face of the thousands making the return trip before nightfall, we may have been forced to spend the night. Bosnia has…

Faith and Football: What the Gospel Church Can Learn from the NFL

By Douglas Harrison

…thinking about sexuality in gospel music. For perhaps the first time in the 14-year history of the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration, there is a real reason to note meaningful discontinuities between the dominant views on homosexuality of the gospel concert’s headliners, and prevailing attitudes toward non-heterosexuality at the leading edge of NFL culture. It’s probably too much to call the NFL open and affirming (there are still no openly gay NFL pl…