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God Bless Islam with Courageous Leadership

By Ebrahim Moosa

…ely and help people think imaginatively? Or does he focus on impieties and promote the virtues of paraphernalia like the dress code and the mandatory length of facial hairs? If the imam is as wise as the religious leader in the Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, it will be a huge step up. Mosque committees share their burden of responsibility too. Often they appoint preachers by applying the lowest and cheapest standard; theological div…

Dear President Bush

By Jimmy McCarty

…own, who were loud and proud political progressives. I did service work in India, Uganda, Kenya, Detroit, and post-Katrina New Orleans. I worked for a nonprofit and a church in inner-city L.A. I was given a worldview that enabled me to make sense of all of the injustice and oppression I saw, and that worldview was Christianity. It was a Christianity different in many ways from the one I grew up with, but it is still recognizably and unabashedly Ch…

Sit Down and Shut Up: Pulling Mindfulness Up By Its (Buddhist) Roots

By Max Zahn

…ement of the pressures of U.S. marketing to sell things by announcing them new or fresh or interesting,” added Loncke. Marketers and practitioners gravitate toward this newness, rather than “doing the sometimes tedious work of giving credit where credit is due.” Loncke and other mindfulness critics belong to an engaged Buddhist movement that itself is open to criticism for the appropriation of Buddhism, hitching the tradition to a progressive poli…

Equality Opponents Try to Reverse UN Progress; Anti-Gay Pentecostal Pastor Elected Mayor of Rio; Indonesian University Official Tells LGBT Students To ‘Normalize’ Or Be Punished; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…al same-sex relations, forces women to adhere to a strict and modest dress code in public, and has zero-tolerance for dissident’s freedom of expression – presents a surprisingly lenient attitude on trans issues. On the surface, the Iranian government seems supportive of the trans community. Official reports reveal that gender confirmation surgery for trans individuals is subsidized by the state. Trans activists are also legally allowed to organize…

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…d by your encounter with Asian religions. Would you still call yourself a “freelance monotheist?” Or is “freelance religionist” a better moniker? Yes, I wish I had never made that quip about being a freelance monotheist. I drag it around with me wherever I go. What I meant was that at that time I drew nourishment from all three of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that I could not see any one of them as superior to th…

Predicting the Future of Religion: A Thought Experiment

By Ed Simon

…SIS in Iraq and Syria could possibly signal the beginnings of a terrifying new chapter in religious oppression. Will our future historian write about bloody religious crusades between Muslims and Christians in the new Global South? Or will small but growing secular movements in Africa and Asia prevent this? What will our historian say about the growth of “indigenous” religion? From Max Muller to Mircea Eliade western scholars have often patronizin…

“We’re Not Fighting About Politics, We’re Fighting About God”: Diana Butler Bass Wants a Revolution

By Jesse James DeConto

…in this muddiness, this liminal zone of human relationship, that something new is being born, new life is being fashioned—and we don’t know what that’s going to look like yet. The liminal place can’t stay liminal forever, even though it feels like it in a postmodern age – it feels like we’re going to be living in fluidity for the next-however-long it’s going to be. We are human beings, and we build things. The question that I have is: Can we build…

Sikh Prof Attacked on Heels of New Study

By Rob Shryock

…only about 20% can identify the country of origin of the Sikh faith (it’s India). 49% of Americans believe “Sikh” is a sect of Islam, and most Americans identify the practice of turban-wearing primarily with the figure of Osama bin Laden, a fact that makes it more believable that in 2008 alone fully 9% of New York City Sikhs said they had been assaulted because of their religion. But it’s not just association with radical Islam and the resulting…

Global LGBT Recap: Culture War Claims More Victims

By Peter Montgomery

…izens, and many years of diligent work.” Putin put Kiselyov in charge of a new government news agency created in December to tighten his control of the media. Kiselyov said last year that if gay people die in an accident, their hearts should be burned or buried so that they could not be transplanted. The Human Rights campaign released an animated video about the role American evangelical activists have played in promoting anti-gay policies in Russ…

Occultism and New Age Take Off in Iran: An Interview with Alireza Doostdar

By Alireza Doostdar

…, I realized something that surprised me even more: I had assumed that the New Age was new to Iran in the 21st century; but in fact, its European esotericist precursors had been around for at least a century earlier. And so I examined what I believe to be the beginnings of European-imported spirituality: French Kardecist Spiritism in the early twentieth century, and a number of other currents that emerged around the same time (Theosophy, mesmerism…