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The Forgotten History Behind Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Terrorism

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…n Muslim men and women who literally helped to build the United States from 1776 to 1865, when legal slavery was formally ended. The 20th century is so full of Muslim contributions to Western literature, music, art, sports, politics, business—every realm of life in the West—that some household names should suffice to illustrate the point. In jazz, Ahmad Jamal, Art Blakey, Dakota Staton. In sports, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Zinedine Zidane…

Kanye West’s Critique of Prosperity Preaching

By Josef Sorett

…alone, he does effectively call attention to the implications of a now all-too familiar theo-financial formula. Before you check out the video for yourself on YouTube, here’s a random sample of the song’s lyrics: … For the low low price, you too can live the glamorous life, you too can have the blood of Christ, three easy payments, order tonight… … I know I’m spiritual I need a financial miracle Please God, you’re the king imperial And I’ll take…

Clueless in Gaza

By Shalom Goldman

…soldier, precious and beloved though he may be; and this closure is the all-too-natural consequence of a clumsy and calcified policy, which again and again resorts by default to the use of massive and exaggerated force, at every decisive juncture, where wisdom and sensitivity and creative thinking are called for instead. Why then haven’t we in the United States heard more about these oppositional voices? Because the reporting from Israel is highly…

Religious Leaders Demand Apology from West for Anti-Islam Comments

By Sarah Posner

…ty in the public forum. The whole video is here. Notably, it also includes West’s views on the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict: “we cannot create another state, a quote, unquote Palestinian state, that would be nothing but another terrorist state.” West, who went on to extol American exceptionalism in the interview, was fined by the U.S. military in 2003 for his involvement in the use of “improper methods” to get information fr…

Nonviolent Resistance in the West Bank: A Review of Budrus

By Ira Chernus

…ery essence of nonviolence. Watching the people of Budrus wrestle with life-and-death choices on the screen can be a profound experience if it leads us to wrestle with the same kind of choices after we leave the theater. After I left the theater I found myself wrestling with another question, too—the final question that Gandhi and his American disciple, Dr. King, posed to all of us: Can we love those who persecute us? The film scarcely raises the…

2022 American Values Survey Offers Some Good News — And Some Bad

By Daniel Schultz

…began, then, the good news here is that most people in the US share a more-or-less tolerant perspective on social issues—and to a lesser extent, on racial questions. The bad news is, the people who aren’t on board with that perspective not only make up a significant part of the population, but they’re very fired up and in just under two weeks they could very well ride a wave of dissatisfaction with the economy to control vast portions of American…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…I saw Long give a heavy-handed appeal for money during one of TBN’s “Praise-A-Thons” to an audience that clearly didn’t have the money to spare for lining the pockets of Christian television titans. Long was presented as a prophet; he learned the “spiritual authority” and “kingdom order” from the same teacher as Earl Paulk, and earlier in his career, T.D. Jakes. Here’s how Long applied the pressure: For Long, the telethon presents just another opp…

No, I Don’t Owe My Yoga Mat to Vivekananda

By Andrea R. Jain

…yoga was stirring plenty of conversation. Consider Pierre Bernard, a turn-of-the-century American social radical, sexual deviant, and early modern yogi. Bernard discovered yoga in his boyhood when he met an Indian yogi by the name of Sylvais Hamati in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hamati became the boy’s guru, and Bernard mastered many yoga techniques under his guidance. As a young man, Bernard spent years reveling in the public spectacle of his yoga tranc…

Kentucky-Fried Christianity: Governor Matt Bevin Wants to Pray Away Violence in Louisville

By Spencer Dew

…ntly proposed to eradicate violence in Louisville’s poorer, largely African-American west side by calling for faithful Christians to volunteer and assemble in “small groups of three to 10 people to begin a ritual of quietly walking one block, in one troubled neighborhood, at 7 p.m., several days a week for one year, praying as they walk.” The governor admitted the plan was “Pretty unsophisticated. Pretty uncomplicated. Pretty basic,” but he insist…

Literary Critic George Steiner, Whose Views on Anti-Semitism Drew Controversy, Dies at 90

By Ed Simon

…. He rather belonged to a generation of Jewish scholars from more than half-a-century ago, figures like Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, and Hannah Arendt who drew from both European high culture and Jewish mysticism, and who were omnivorous in their fascinations. Steiner examined religion, culture, and literature in dozens of books published between 1952 and 2011. A survivor amongst the civilization of Jews who perished in the Holocaust, Steiner…