Religion Dispatches
…tions ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, for a big order signed on the occasion of President Obama’s visit (230 planes at $21.7 billion!). And thank one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates from Dubai, for the other (50 jets at $18 billion). So here’s to cooperation of the civilizations. Here’s to throwing facts in the face of faux analysis. While Victoria Jackso…
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…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…
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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…
Read More…help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….
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…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. Where Pigpen called up the trusty telephone operator, I did my pining alone, with only the camaraderie of a searc…
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…elites revered and paid homage to “authentic culture” from the Mississippi Delta or from Bristol, Virginia. But never mind. Bubble is as Bubble does. After Tuesday’s election, coastal elites have been busy opining that “we” should be empathetic towards heartland Trump voters. “We” should feel their pain. We should stop shaming Trump supporters. We should stop making fun of their religion. Now in the Rocky Mountain West, neither heartland exactly n…
Read More…, local government officials, including the mayor of East Lansing, started contacting the Tennes family to inquire about potentially discriminatory practices, which may be illegal under the City of East Lansing’s non-discrimination ordinance and which, officials contended, violated the spirit of the farmers market. East Lansing officials repeatedly encouraged Country Mill Farms to “voluntarily elect not to attend the market” for the rest of the se…
Read More…wiris during a recent public meeting in Mansoura, a large city in the Nile Delta region. Morsy spoke mostly in general terms allegedly accusing Sawiris of “insulting Islam” with the tweet. Morsy also made clear that his comments were political and not aimed at Sawiris, because he was a Copt. Sawiris, a Coptic Christian, responded by filing a complaint against Morsy with the Egyptian prosecutor general. The Free Egyptians Party (FEP), founded b…
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…t were near each other, thanks to the physical characteristics of the Nile delta. Both the earth’s physical features, and human beings’ built environments, marked a boundary between the two. That boundary is harder to find in most American cities, where the divide between “Anytown” and “the greater Anytown area” might not be a line at all, but a more gradual widening of lot sizes, along with some demographic shifts. A lot of people who aren’t resi…
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…and only the sorority, Alpha Phi International Women’s Fraternity and its Delta Tau chapter at Louisiana State University, got it right. Emily Hines, the undergraduate in question, was expelled from her sorority for mocking U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, an openly transgender public figure, in a transphobic TikTok video in which Hines sported a baby blue Alpha Phi sweatshirt. For its part, the leadership of Hines’s sorority re…
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