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Enlightenment’s Islam: A “Necessary Fiction”

By Rob Goodman

…t of a series called “Human Knowledge.” The only things I changed were the dates. The furious quotes come from 2010 (and could have been swapped for equally paranoid quotes from any month in the past several years). The mural, though, went up in 1897—and, as far as I can tell, it took up residence in that prime real estate without a hint of controversy. Can we imagine that happening today? Glance at one of Geller’s subway ads juxtaposing a Quranic…

Pledging Virginity to Dad: A New Doc Explores the World of ‘Purity Balls’

By Jessica Valenti

…se with their fathers under white arches decorated with flowers, like prom dates. And the midst of all this revelry, they promise to remain virgins and their fathers, in turn, pledge to be the protector of that “purity.” Some are given rings—it reminds me of a wedding ceremony. I asked my father to watch a video clip of the balls a few years ago; I was fascinated with them. At the time, I was concerned that I was overreacting (perhaps I was just a…

Religious Freedom Gets Hollywood Treatment

By Daniel Ramirez

…ntext. Namely, that the titanic conﬂict between Church and State in Mexico dates back to the founding of the Republic, when liberal priests and Masons sought unsuccessfully to de-couple the two institutions of national life. With the help of General Antonio López de Santa Ana, its “brilliant star,” the Church held on to its forced tithing requirements, its monopoly over birth, marriage, and death, and, importantly, vast real estate. The religious…

Two Cheers for British Museum’s Sanitized Hajj Exhibition

By Nabila Pathan

…he mystery for both Muslims and non-Muslims about a spiritual journey that dates back to the 7th century AD. Publicized widely as a “first” in the West, the project does not come without hope and expectation in this post-9/11 era. In recent years, attempts to capture the essence of the journey for a wider audience has been facilitated by the globalizing effects of the transnational media environment. Whether it was CNN making news history with its…

Papal Profanity: The Vatican’s Pagan Museum

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…Vatican Museums, so I was intrigued by that detail-less detail. While the dates proved to be a little fuzzy, this was nonetheless a very early development—fully a generation before the explosion of classical art museums we see throughout Europe in the first two or three decades of the 19th century. So, how and why was this done so early inside the Vatican Palace was one question. And what in the world did the Library administration intend when th…

Praying to the Zombie Jesus: The Spirituality of Horror

By W. Scott Poole

…of horror that surrounds her; the other confesses a lack of faith that pre-dates the zombie pandemic. Both ask for miracles in a world ruled by monsters. This Is My Body Some horror newbies, drawn in by the excellent storytelling and character development that AMC is justly famous for, might be surprised to see religious symbolism and themes making an appearance in a gruesome tale of rotting, flesh-eating zombies. They shouldn’t be. In fact, the u…

Tea Party, Circa 1930s: A Response to Michael Kazin

By Diane Winston

…e melding of politics and economics into an implicitly religious worldview dates back to the 1930s. Moreover, the left is alive and well, and corporate media—far from being the tool of liberals—colludes with the right by pursuing its own agenda of covering only the news that’s safe, and profitable, to print. Kazin asserts that “the current populist right originated among the articulate spokespeople and well-funded institutions that emerged in the…

Why Darwin Keeps Coming Back

By Peter Manseau

…ome ways a symptom of a religious malaise. 1925, 1955, 2005: What do these dates in American history have in common? Other than, say, the long shadow of war, recession, and deep ambivalence about the role of religious and political identity in the life of the nation, I can’t imagine what. Arguments about evolution reappear like clockwork at times of national uncertainty, times at which Americans are questioning not just the origins of life, but it…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…f its Center for Cultural Conservatism, a position he left in 2009. Berlet dates Lind’s first significant writing on “cultural Marxism” to 1997. Berlet: Most significant is a collection of essays published by the Free Congress Foundation in 2004 on cultural Marxism, political correctness, and multiculturalism. The editor of that collection was William S. Lind. Some form of the term “Cultural Marxism” in English appears over 600 times in the Breivi…