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Think Yoga is a Religion? Try Youth Soccer!

By Joanna Brooks

…I am twice-weekly practitioner of Bikram Yoga, the infamous 26-posture, 90-minute, 105-degree brand of hot yoga introduced to America and copyrighted by the eponymous Bikram Choudhury. Copyrighted? Yes, Bikram copyrighted his sequence of 26 postures, much to the chagrin of critics who say you can’t own sacred knowledge. But in the legal filing to copyright yoga, Bikram’s attorneys characterized yoga not as a religion but as something akin to a dan…

Debating God: Atheist and Evangelical Face Off at Notre Dame

By Nathan Schneider

…e by a person like Craig is a losing strategy,” Harris says. In his twenty-minute opening speech, he laid out his concept of the “moral landscape” based on the “well-being of conscious creatures,” discernible by science. In his so-called “rebuttal” periods, Harris attacked biblical morality and compared it to the Taliban. He addressed most of the subjects Craig explicitly set out to avoid. There were also some off-color remarks about fried chicken…

6 Reservations About U.S. Intervention in Libya

By Haroon Moghul

…ter of an emergency humanitarian intervention, he should have stood up the minute the missiles started flying and explained why he hadn’t consulted the American people—because, as he saw it, there was no time. Still more, making exceptions is a messy business. There are many court cases in which a defendant is clearly guilty, and yet we must throw out the case due to a violation of the rules of evidence. In individual instances, this creates inj…

Ken Ham Uninvited for Mocking Fellow Speaker’s Version of Creationism

By Julie Ingersoll

…ress releases from the parties involved, and the release, by Ham, of a two-minute clip from a convention talk that he says is at issue. It seems Ham had been critical of one of the other speakers who is not a young earth creationist, and critical of the convention for allowing him to speak. In fact, it’s this very issue of the alleged convention’s “compromising with compromisers” that led to the kerfuffle. Ham wrote on his blog: “It is this very c…

Hypocritical Freakout over Shari’ah, but Not Biblical Law

By Sarah Posner

…deral government of stealing the public’s money. Imagine all of that for a minute. There would have been an unbelievable outcry: the anti-Muslim shari’ah fear-mongers would have claimed the Constitution was under seige and the Christian nation under attack by religiously-motivated seditionists. These sorts of arrangements — contractual agreements to submit to dispute resolution outside of the courts, with choice-of-law provisions — are commonplace…

ABC’s Good Christian Bitches Makes Feminists of Religious Right

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ut misogyny. The lion is laying down with the lamb. The messiah is due any minute. Best get right with God, folks, because it’s all Hicks paintings, angelic choirs, and vegetarianism from here on out. Before I rise to meet the Lord in the air, though, permit me a few thoughts. Thought one: Psst… Some feminists have been reclaiming the word “bitch” for, like, a few years now. A woman who adopts the label of “bitch” for herself, the thinking goe…

Egyptians vs. The Police

By H.A. Hellyer

…ff, when Muhammad, one of my neighbors, recognized him. “Oh, hello. Wait a minute — aren’t you the police officer we saw here yesterday?” Bashfully, he replied, “Um, yes.” Muhammad responded, with all the righteousness evident in his voice, “So, no work for you today?” None of us wanted to see a cop. None of us wanted to see one ever again. A few days ago, it was the police who were both the mainstay of our security, and the annoying bane of our l…

Pawlenty Stars in American Civil Religion: The Movie

By Michael J. Altman

…squerades as a book ad that looks like a movie trailer. The ad runs only a minute and fifteen seconds but it packs in a flurry of American religious and civic mythology around the themes of freedom, security, and prosperity. With a thrilling musical score of vague but impending danger that could have been lifted from the season finale of 24, Pawlenty’s voiceover reminds us that these three goals won’t be easy but that we can accomplish them becaus…

Prophet Muhammad

By Amina Wadud

…e soundtrack from one I advised on a few years ago. It has the lovely four-minute prayer for waking). Anyway, I want to make a shift in how we might look at this important historical figure, and specifically about teachers, leaders, and guides. I told you yesterday that part of the inspiration for making this entry about the Prophet Muhammad (saw) was through the reminders my own spiritual teacher has been making during our retreat. Well, there’s…

Iftar: Breaking Fast

By Amina Wadud

…the fasting day, at maghrib, sunset. At no other time in the year is this minute so closely watched. Imagine: even in the busiest cities in the world, if they have majority Muslim populations, everything stops. My first time living in Cairo I left during Ramadan, and the night before my departure (because I was on my vacation days), I literally walked down a silent major road and said out loud “goodbye, Cairo!” because everyone else was inside br…