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The Facts About ‘Sharia’ May Surprise You

…ons (mostly punishments) and grafting them haphazardly onto existing civil codes. The result: Muslim governments have been imposing Islamic-sounding punishments without implementing the numerous strict procedural restrictions that had always severely limited those punishments. Why focus on Islamic punishments developed a thousand years ago, which were in abeyance until twentieth-century fundamentalists brought them back? Because they’re sensationa…

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Red White and Blue No Longer

…tion” uttered out loud any longer. What one does hear, however, amounts to code for the same thing. Thus, R.J. Rushdoony’s still-influential ideas about forging a godly nation—a nation organized according to biblical law—take it pretty much for granted that godly social organization has whites on top. Rushdoony, who lived into the current century, condemned interracial marriage as “unequal yoking.”  Un-dead David Barton, another hugely influential…

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“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other

…re Freedom and Liberty Twins?”, wrote that freedom “is more likely to be holistic, to mean a total condition or state of being,” whereas liberty “is more likely to be plural and piecemeal.” Another way of putting it: freedom is the capacity to do things in the world, while liberty is the absence of external institutional constraints. In the era of the American Revolution, liberty reigned supreme. For the founders, liberty was the “fundamental Amer…

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Talmud v. Torture: The Jewish Case Against “Enhanced Interrogation”

…dictates of the prophetic voice through a regimented system of behavior: a code of conduct thoroughly imbued with an ethos and a morality. The most articulate condemnations of torture that Judaism has to offer are therefore presented most effectively as deeply spiritual legal analyses. The best of these, in recent years, was composed by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub for Rabbis for Human Rights, an international organization focusing on a number of progr…

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There’s Nothing Wrong with ‘Prayer’; But There’s Every Reason to be Skeptical of Pence’s Coronavirus Prayer Circle

…use of the term “regular American” might not play directly into the nationalist Christian supremacism that’s fueling the destruction of American democracy, such as it was? Or that words like “regular,” “real,” and “normal,” in this context are often code for “conservative white Christians”? Might Merritt have devoted a thought or two to the possibility that American criticism of “thoughts and prayers” responses to real-world problems have everythi…

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‘Religious Freedom’ for Atheists

…tes throughout secular democratic Europe. Article 226b of the Danish Penal Code, for instance, singles out for protection—among other categories—groups of people who “on account of their faith” are threatened, insulted, or degraded. It does not single out people, regardless of their affiliation, on account of their convictions of conscience. Know Thy Enmity The most principled motivation for hate speech laws can be found in the principle of equal…

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The Dark Horse ‘Stop the Steal’ Scenario: NAR Leaders Sought ‘Trojan Horse’ in Election Offices Filled with ‘Christian Patriots’

…ities before, during, and since January 6th, and many remain election denialists. But what’s gone largely unnoticed are efforts, by this, perhaps the most significant religious movement of the 21st century, to train people to infiltrate election offices as election workers. NAR connected organization Lion of Judah came to national attention last summer at an event in Wisconsin when its leader, Jacob Caleb Standifer, told the crowd that when the po…

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Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

…conveyed this view in a very concise and pithy manner. The idea was first promoted by Christians. In 1853 Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came…

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Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

…r living”). This is often lost on commentators. While scientists and journalists assess AA by the standards of the medical community (i.e. percentage of individuals who remain sober), AA members assess one another according to quite different metrics: levels of honesty, compassion, open-mindedness, and magnanimity. Although AA was instrumental in shifting the discourse about alcoholism from one of “sin” to “sickness” it nevertheless retained a foc…

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A Real-Life Truman Show?

…hrough the gate leading to the water, one must punch in a combination pass code. The town’s elegantly manicured gardens belie its state’s housing market collapse. But just outside of town, realtors advertise “Free Foreclosure Lists!” Sitting along a commons of lush grass, an attractive young couple casually dressed in designer sunglasses, khakis, and expensive sandals led a group of fair-haired children in prayer. The young blond woman urged the c…

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