Religion Dispatches
…s job at this moment in human history. As a lapsed Dutch Catholic, de Waal promotes what boils down to a version of secular humanism, suggesting that this should be a viable trade-off that could help human societies ease religion out of the body politic without ripping it out like the virgin’s beating heart. Secular humanism has, of course, also been accused of advancing forms of human exceptionalism by thinkers working with an eco-critical lens,…
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…stimes to browse the bookstores in airports in particular to check out the latest screed that had been published on the topic. All of this stoked a desire in me to write a book-length monograph soberly exploring the many dimensions of jihad as evident in different genres of Arabic language primary sources and to anchor these understandings in specific historical circumstances. Finally, after winning a couple of grants, I was able to go on two sa…
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…nt in Canada who keeps a diary against veiling. And the site’s Art section promotes controversial photo galleries on beauty and veiling, cultural and gender identities in Islam, and the use of humor in the Syrian war frontlines, among other things. As a critical space, Free Arab should be commended for promoting individual rights and civil liberties in the Arab context. The site’s work is also significant because it tries to locate secularism as a…
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…ically specific account of the LDS ban on black ordination worked into the latest edition of LDS scriptures by the Church’s professional historians. Gone too was the implicit acknowledgment that the racist ban may have been the product of human error rather than divine will. Sources report behind-the-scenes efforts to have the talk edited before its publication in the Ensign, the official LDS Church magazine, in its semi-annual Conference edition….
Read MoreOn my latest bloggingheads program, I spoke with Wajahat Ali about the media’s, pundits’, and politicians’ treatment of Islam in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. The whole episode is here (and there will be a short addendum posted later* discussing the AP’s story this afternoon reporting that Tsarnaev was influenced by a recent convert to Islam named Misha), but in the following clip, we discuss whether Tsarnaev was a “devout” Muslim: *…
Read MoreThe latest news from Burma should be classified under not good, and the country’s most famous democratic personality, Ang San Suu Kyi, has been disturbingly quiet, preferring not to speak out; whatever her reasons may be, her silence is as they say deafening. In addition to the country’s long history of ethnic and sectarian conflict, the plight of its Muslim population continues to worsen, with evidence of human trafficking of Burmese Muslim refu…
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…their own biblical language; and Obama is to blame for the failure of the latest gun control measure, despite the fact that ninety percent of the public supported the background check measure that was voted down, that Gabi Giffords and the Newtown parents were there to lobby for the measure, and that Obama also employed his chief arm-twister, Joe Biden, to work the floor. Evidently, in this way of thinking, just as there was a large group of whit…
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…widest interest; it is passed on from one to another like the news of the latest victory.” Is “reasons my son is crying” a religious meme, or is a cigar sometimes just a cigar, and a blog just a blog? While this was not its goal, “reasons my son is crying” trades in religious tropes of seeing, suffering, and empathetic community. Pain is still pain. Believe me, I understand that toddlers can turn their moods on a dime. At one moment, all is trage…
Read More…anti-Christ. To some conservative Christians, Google’s iconography is the latest in an ongoing attack on their faith. In a post on Townhall.com titled “Ponder Christian Soldiers Google’s Smirking War On You,” Colorado State Senator Shawn Mitchell decries the choice of a Chávez “doodle”: “Sure, no Christian was mocked, defamed, arrested, or persecuted. And heaven forbid any believer needs internet graphics to help bolster their faith. But hundreds…
Read MoreSocial psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in the latest Democracy: In 1943, Allied forces achieved a hard-fought victory in the North African campaign, captured Sicily, and began to fight their way up the Italian peninsula. Victories in places such as El-Alamein, Salerno, and Anzio gave America some confidence that the Allies would ultimately prevail in Europe. That confidence allowed the American public to shift more of its attention to the Pacific Th…
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