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Douthat’s Sinister Subtext

By Syreeta McFadden

…of our nation. Discussing the proposed construction of the Cordoba House project in Lower Manhattan, Douthat writes: There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run…But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. I…

The “Obamosque” Smears and the Money Fueling Them

By Sarah Posner

…and radio shows, and which earlier this week described the proposed Park51 project as “Obamosque,” is today touting a Time magazine poll showing one quarter of Americans apparently believe President Obama is a Muslim. (A Pew poll out today shows that figure at 19%). Why do that many Americans believe that? Could it be the use of terms like “Obamosque?” Or this photograph on the Special Guests website? Today Special Guests is also promoting the spe…

In the Trenches with the HRC, Working for Transgender Inclusion

By Rev. Erin K. Swenson

…der employees. Recently they have developed the first of its kind research project: Trans-inclusive Health Insurance Research Initiative (THIRI), designed to remove barriers to health insurance coverage for people who are transgender and putting an end to benefits discrimination against transgender people. The work I’m most directly involved with is HRC’s groundbreaking effort to bring transgender awareness to congregations around the country. HRC…

Is This Light?

By Amina Wadud

…he hudud ordinances, has left women to face the brunt of this Islamization project — and usually in a bad way. So if a woman says she has been raped that is taken as confession to a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and she is punished (again, since, rape, a crime of violence is punishing already). In Nigeria, there were two famous cases, those of Amina Lawal and Safiya Husseini, unmarried pregnant women who were sentenced to be stoned to d…

Park 51 and RLUIPA, Or, Conservatives Hoisted On Their Petard

By Daniel Schultz

…s because of Republican legislation, conservative opponents of the Park 51 project have had to fight not on legal grounds, but on the far weaker notion that the community center’s organizers should build elsewhere out of respect for the Ground Zero site. That, it should be said, is hardly a compelling argument.** Or as Melissa Rogers puts it on the Interfaith Alliance’s State of Belief radio show, once again religious freedom means freedom for eve…

The Religious Lives of Soldiers

By Jonathan Ebel

…n, migration, and the Great Depression in America. (I started framing this project well before Lehman Brothers vanished, the McMansions went empty, and hedge fund managers went into hiding.) Like the Great War, the Great Depression hasn’t been engaged much by students of U.S. religious history. Also like the Great War, the Great Depression posed some powerful questions about divine and human efficacy. When I began archival research in earnest last…

Beck’s “Dream”—Our Nightmare

By Julie Ingersoll

…Honor” rally bringing together Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Works, the 9-12 Project, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, and others at the Lincoln Memorial. Beck has announced very few details, though Sarah Palin will join Beck and Barton as a special guest, as will Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece and Director of African American Outreach for Priests for Life Alveda King. While Beck initially promoted the event as a non-political effort to re…

Liberal Defenders of “Mosque” Get it Wrong

By Aisha Ghani

…ination through the misnomer, “Ground-Zero mosque,” those spearheading the project felt that assuaging public fury required a complete erasure of its Islamic identity. A few weeks later, we were presented with ‘Park51,’ the most amorphous of its namesakes. But these efforts (to present the Community Center as innocuous via its nomenclature) is just part of the problem; the very same rhetoric is being materially reproduced in the proposed design fo…

The Week in Religion, Poetically

By Michael J. Altman

…. Second, Miss USA, a Muslim herself, has taken a stand against the Park51 project. So, there you have it. The Salem Witch Trials: video game edition. It’s like a Hawthorne short story for your PC or Mac. A Brooklyn rabbi has been approved to serve as a chaplain in the Army reserves but can’t because the Army wants him to shave his beard. As an older rabbi serving the Army put it, “Look at some of our past generals’ beards, like Ulysses Grant. In…

In Defense of Feisal Abdul-Rauf

By Hussein Rashid

…Cordoba Initiative, two of the three organizations involved in the Park51 project, is coming under increased scrutiny. Despite detailed stories in the New York Times and The Washington Post, there is still an undercurrent of distrust. While it may seem like the attack of Park51 by proxy, it is really an attack on American liberalism by proxy. While I may criticize Abdul-Rauf’s leadership of Park51, it is important to understand that he does have…