Religion Dispatches
…while sustaining or creating thousands of American jobs—up to an estimated 127,000. That’s Muslim money buying American goods, creating American jobs. That’s us benefiting from growth in the Gulf and Southeast Asia. That’s the world growing together. The Muslim world’s democratic convulsions—Indonesia preceded the Arab world by roundabout a decade—are responses to economic lethargy, with booming populations ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosp…
Read More…at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and attempted to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a magical ritual that combined Islamic elements with shamanic practices. On Thursday Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as Rajah Bomoh Sedunia Nujum, delivered a press conference (in which he demonstrated a squint that bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Robertson.) He initially stated that he had been invited to perform his ritual by one of Malaysia’s “…
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…n, other parents objected and police ordered the parents to leave. Romania: 1,000 people attend pride parade The Associated Press’s Alison Mutler reported that about 1,000 people joined a gay pride march in Bucharest, which came after lawmakers approved an initiative to amend the constitution to restrict marriage to a man and a woman. Australia: Tennis stars spar over marriage equality A new development in a long bitter public debate over marriage…
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…shootings in 2009: that of Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 servicemen and women and wounded 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, and George Sodini, who killed 3 women and wounded 12 at a Pennsylvania fitness club. Both men had no friends, work issues, difficulties meeting women, and felt victimized—Sodini by women and Hasan by his fellow soldiers for being a Muslim. And both men intended to die. Sodini shot himself before he could be stoppe…
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…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…
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…idea what was happening to me. It would’ve been nice to have known that my spiritual anguish didn’t mean I was rejecting faith, or being rejected by the object of my faith. Such anguish might be a purging; God nudging us to reject something in ourselves, an error in our acts or our aspirations. But I was never taught Islam as a journey, even though I came from a religious family. I grew up in an environment where religion and religious ideas frequ…
Read More…help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….
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…or something like a body with which to enjoy it. The critical verse here is 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul explains to those who doubt the truth of the resurrection that the body is like a seed—and when it rises in the resurrection is both has the properties of a seed and of something else altogether. “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable… It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Generations of Christians…
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…sun was only one of many tied to the stake and burned. The Crusades. Until 1961, atheists weren’t allowed to serve on a US jury. Women are dying of AIDS in Africa because condoms make baby Jesus sad. In Utah, 45% of homeless teenagers are Mormons. Female genital mutilation. A famous comic book artist she knows was told that he wouldn’t be able to draw in heaven. “I’ve touched on 1/100 of the things about religion that piss me off,” Christina sa…
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…t difficult and dangerous prisoners to be locked in a secluded location for 10 days without speaking, meditating about 12 hours each day, guided by two teachers. There would be no guards with weapons, no prison officials allowed inside. “After it was over, we learned the prisoners had threatened to kill the teachers several times. But the teachers never told us. They just kept the session going,” she said. By day six, the turning point for most pe…
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