Religion Dispatches
…e uninspiring forms of industrial warfare still alive and none-too-well in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also some new trends worth tracking, and Religion Dispatches was formed in large measure to enable better reflection upon them. The first has to do with the continued advances in contemporary communications technologies. RD serves a population that will continue to receive more and more of its news and information online (this trend will co…
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…the West. But there are many clerics in the Middle East, even in Iran, and Iraq, who have interest in this Charter. Now this won’t be headline news. We want people to get the Charter adopted in schools, and working in a quiet way. This is a kind of careful methodical work. So my friend has taken copies of my book personally to these rulers and kings and emirs and they are really interested. The interesting thing about the ruler of Sharjah is that…
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…s, evangelicals, and Orthodox Christians, an “ecumenism” celebrated by its promoters as evidence of its far-reaching appeal. The document targets reproductive freedom (enemy of the “sanctity of life”) and LGBTQ equality (enemy of the “dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife”) as foes of Christians’ religious freedom. It’s a new document but an old canard. And it’s proof that the culture wars are not only not over; there hasn’…
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…jeunesse doree. Not only do they not have to go to the burning deserts of Iraq or to the chilly forbidding heights of Afghanistan: they don’t even have to know anything about the lives of those who are going. The idea that they might experience any Fallows-like guilt or have any second thoughts about their degree of insulation is simply not an issue today. This extreme stratification and insulation of the privileged is what weighs on my mind, and…
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…as lost on no one. So if the political aim of the Prize was to weigh in on Iraq or Afghanistan, as Limbaugh suggests, then it will likely have as little impact as the previous awards I mentioned. But what else might it be? The Nobel Peace Prize has also gone to other persons and other organizations—like Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Mother Theresa (1979), “Doctors Without Borders” (1999). In these cases, and in many others, the Nobel Committee pr…
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…Parliament turned down an American request to host part of the invasion of Iraq, and yet continues to push close ties with the West. While Turks assert their right to practice a public Islam with a confidence that would have seemed unbelievable just a few decades back, these same Turks are not demanding the Islamic state we have understood by that term since 1979. They are keen to enhance the democracy their country has been building on its own re…
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…ew of Islam as a unified ideology which spreads from Europe all the way to Iraq and Afghanistan. According to this outlook, Muslims are petrified in history and occupy a mold from which they cannot escape; defined by their so-called conformity to the past and their incapacity to address the current challenges of political development and liberal religious thinking. Such an approach justifies the creation of an insurmountable boundary between moder…
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…int that the New Atheism crosses the line and undermines its own effort to promote critical thinking. The problem with an exclusively negative approach to religion is twofold. First, while it helps sell books, it risks promoting intolerance and potentially even hatred of religious people. Atheists will point out that they do not fly planes into buildings or murder doctors, as some religious fundamentalists have done. However, it takes one visit to…
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…uslim-punk angle was unavoidable, especially in the context of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “However, I would hate to see Taqwacore stall in public discourse as a form of exotica,” he wrote. “Their songs are actually quite catchy, with interesting dynamics and a variety of sound textures, all of which are a testament to their musicianship.” The book now represents a new American exotic, a testament to the wide diversity of religious, immigran…
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…ormity, security, and prosperity. Many liberals cheered on the invasion of Iraq. Many of them invested in the stock market. And yes, liberals know a thing or two about smugness. But conservatives are unique in having been told again and again that the promises of our society have failed not because they are inherently undeliverable, but because liberals have betrayed them. An entire generation has come to believe this. Now that generation is faced…
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