Search for "cheap airlines tickets from charlotte to little rock phone number 1-800-299-7264"

The Active Principle of Islam, or, Activating Islamic Principles

By Amina Wadud

…r life for all the oppressed and exploited people of the world. I see very little from our current political leaders that would give me such confidence. What little I do see is marginalized by those who are wielding the greatest power. One reason for my lack of confidence is simply that the agendas expressed by Muslim political and intellectual elites are primarily top-down operations. They seem more focused on the role of legalized authority to a…

Global LGBT Recap: Nigeria Jails Gays, Russian Orthodox Spox Calls for Criminalization Referendum

By Peter Montgomery

…sion talking about the LGBT people being less than human. For example, the number two person in the state broadcasting company – actually now he’s the number one person – hosted a show devoted to the question of whether it was enough to protect our children to ban homosexual propaganda or whether more needed to be done. He argued that more needed to be done. He said and we need to outlaw blood and sperm donations by them. And if they die in car ac…

Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…d inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward door number one, the kings’ door, on my way out af…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…lves as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (38%).” Pinning down precise numbers for LLDM is almost impossible. The church claims to have more than three million members abroad, and 1.5 million in Mexico, which would make it the country’s largest non-Catholic religious institution. The 2010 Mexican census reported only around 200,000 members, but that number may well be low (the Mormon church in Mexico has argued that the religious count was ina…

When They See His Face Will They Be “Beliebers”?

By Nicole Greenfield

…m Tebow, are making Christianity cool. Tattoos (and body piercing and punk rock, for example) have long been part of Christian subculture and, importantly, they were also long condemned by a majority of evangelicals. Jay Bakker, dubbed “punk preacher” because of his characteristic full-sleeve tattoos, has attested to that. But with the continual growth of a distinctly hipster Christianity across the United States, and with tattoos becoming increas…

Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

By Amanda Robb

…out. He remembers not remembering being shot himself. So all of that is a little something of what the victims and the parents of the victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School now have. Every horror is utterly, terribly unique, but there are universals. In a super white, super loud flash… or a DJ’s croon… or a telephone’s brrng brrng, when you become forever lonesome. Because you know the real secret. Anything can happen. Aliens cou…

God Dissolves into the Occupy Movement

By Nathan Schneider

…out a very loud non serviam! It really leaves the establishment with very little to say. What’s their response going to be: domination is good for you?? It was a little more than three decades ago when Margaret Thatcher proclaimed that “there is no such thing as society—there are only individuals.” I think it’s possible that acquisitive individualism is nearing the end of a very long run. Hooray and hallelujah if that is indeed the case. NS: To…

Jesus, Carpet Bomb My Heart: An Undercover Muslim in Detroit

By Haroon Moghul

…ke it. But with all the transport out of and away from yourself, there was little time to digest what the speakers were saying, little time to think through the implications of their exhortations. In fairness, that didn’t seem to be a problem right away. As I said, the first few hours seemed to be a public relations dream come true; I heard little overtly anti-Muslim sentiment (and no mention of homosexuality). A look at the program confirmed why….

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…an’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no! It took another several years before I really understood that some people, perhaps most people,…

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…der dresses and ridiculously high-heeled shoes. They sipped from splits of cheap sparkling wine while their tuxedoed companions swilled the local brew, Budweiser—that, too, a faded American icon, sold off in 2008 to the Belgium-based multinational, InBev. No, of course, these were not the protesters who have begun to appear in more and more American cities, but keepers of the once-stable base of a certain version of the fabled American Dream: wedd…