Search for "cheap airline tickets for a child phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Does It Matter If Islam Is A Religion? An American Ahmadi Explains The Effects Of Religious Discrimination

By Daniel Schultz

…on this and other matters. Max Boot—no liberal himself—once described Gorka as an “anti-Muslim extremist.” Other foreign policy specialists have described him as an Islamophobe. Gorka was a member of the Order of Vitéz, a Nazi-linked Hungarian group, and proudly displayed medals from the group at Trump’s inauguration. Most relevant, though, despite disavowals of animus toward Islam, Gorka has described it more in terms of a totalitarian ideology…

Good Mourning Modeled by Chaplains and Clergy at the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire

By Kaya Oakes

…olice and fire departments, was headed to bed around 11:30PM when two fire alarms came in on his phone. Landeza drove ten minutes to the site of the fire, which had reached three alarms by the time he arrived. A warehouse in East Oakland was burning. “The thing that hit me,” he said, “is that there’s a bunch of young people there.” As Landeza walked around the scene, he overheard more and more people saying the same thing: the people inside were t…

The Fragility of Our Reality: A Conversation with the Brain Behind PBS Miniseries on Neuroscience

By Michael Schulson

…ny other scientific field, neuroscientists can oscillate between the hard data of the physical world and the loftier questions of self and soul. That kind of back-and-forth has been central to the career of David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine. As an academic researcher, Eagleman has studied time perception, synesthesia, sensory input, and decision-making. But that more traditional work has included some less-than-tra…

Sometimes Salvation Looks Like Rage: An Open Letter to “Non-denominational” Churches

By Yazmine Nichols

…on-denominational, evangelical church. The first pertains to the spirit of apathy. Too many times I have witnessed firsthand the scorn, shame and rejection that comes when one of our own wanders or falls away. The phone calls stop, the texts cease, and the friendships end (scriptures such as Matthew 5:30; Matthew 18:15-17; and 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 are usually cited as reasons for “radical” acts of amputation). But how are we defining what is radic…

Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

By David Krueger

…rrific terrorist attacks in Paris, Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia received a phone message stating, “I hope you people are happy about what you did in Paris. I’d like to state for the record that Allah is a piece of pork shit.” A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of December 7, the mosque manager unlocked the front doors for the early morning fajr prayer. As he was about to enter, he noticed the severed head of a pig lying next to the do…

Reporting from Paris: A Prayer for Polluters

By Donna Schaper

…the serenity prayer and focus on the accepting part. It actually is more balanced. It could also be called the change prayer. It could also be called the wisdom prayer. The Pope has prevailed, in the way Occupy did, in naming the agenda as moral. No one can speak without using the word moral. Al Gore asks the moral questions this way: What must we do? What can we do? What will we do? His triplet joins the triplet of the prayer. Of course we will…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…t of the front page [image, right] featured four photographs, three of the apartment previously belonging to the San Benardino shooters and one of the female shooter’s face. The largest image of the apartment includes a decorative wall-hanging with the 99 names of Allah woven in above a dining table strewn with random dining-table things like a wooden fruit bowl, a few artificial flowers, half a bottle of Sprite, and some phone chargers. The two s…

Oprah, Terrorist Cells, and the Meaning of Life: An Interview with Paul Froese

By Andrew Aghapour

…es unplug from their day-to-day lives and reunite. Siblings compare their parallel lives. We peruse old photo albums and take mental snapshots of our aging parents, forming a past-and-future flip book of our own aging bodies. We get scared. We tell old stories and overeat. New Year’s resolutions are what happen when bloated Americans go back to their lives, and then pivot optimistic in the face of death. On Purpose: How We Create The Meaning of Li…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…se children and spend time with siblings – Honor: the desire for upright character – Idealism: the desire for social justice – Independence: the desire for self-reliance – Order: the desire for structure – Physical Activity: the desire for muscle exercise – Power: the desire for influence or leadership – Romance: the desire for beauty and sex – Saving: the desire to collect – Social Contact: the desire to have fun with peers – Status: the desire f…

Making ‘The Link’: AIPAC’s New Crises

By Matthew Duss

…ment, Biden condemned it. Over the course of the week, the disagreement escalated. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a 45-minute phone call to Netanyahu. Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, after being summoned to the State Department for a dressing down, reportedly called the dispute a 35-year nadir of the US-Israel relationship. Subsequently, in an attempt to tamp down concerns, Oren took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to deny that…