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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Jihadis?

By Haroon Moghul

…k Hirsi Ali is deliberately misrepresenting Islam. I think she’s doing the best she can. In her insistence that secular analysis must not be applied to Islam, that somehow the religion must be kept immune from reasonable and rational discussion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali most closely resembles the Muslims she claims use cell phones while shunning the worldview behind them. You could say that she’s undergone a schism, but that’s all. Islam needs a Reformatio…

Who Bombed the Boston Marathon?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…ted. Only 149 groups existed before Obama was elected in 2008. In 2012 the number had expanded to 1,360. Not all are plotting terrorist attacks, of course. But some are. In September 2012, Daryl Johnson, a terrorist analyst for the US Department of Homeland Security testified before a Senate committee that there was an “upsurge” of potentially violent non-Islamic extremist activity in the United States. So fingers point toward right-wing Christian…

How the COVID-19 Pandemic May Permanently Change Our ‘Good Death’ Narrative

By Cody J. Sanders

…their social distancing practices, filming words of remembrance at varied sites of significance to the deceased: a back porch rocking chair, a local fishing pond, a beloved hiking trail, the site of a first date or a family vacation or a long-held job. This could draw together in the space between the physical and the non-physical a deceased person and a community of human and more-than-human others sharing a cyborg mourning space. Then, via what…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…a has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African v…

Breivik’s Religious Pluralist Vision: A COEXIST Bumper Sticker Without the Crescent

By Michael J. Altman

…iving there. A number of Vyas’ articles circulate on conservative Hindu websites and forums claiming various Hindu genocides at the hands of Muslims in different historical periods. For Breivik, Vyas provides an example of Muslim violence and imperial expansion. Breivik returns to South Asia again and again for examples of Muslim violence such as the Hindu Kush article to portray right wing anti-Islam Hindus as allies in the fight against Islam. U…

Who’s Scared of Polygamy? A Restrained Case for the “Slippery Slope” Argument

By William E. Smith

…to DeBoer) that the standard slippery-slope ends well before the plunge to bestiality or other “pro-family” bogeymen. And I do so, in part, for several reasons not currently being considered in discussions around the consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage. Increasingly polygamy is being considered independently of things like bestiality (here is a recent example). In some of these newer discussions, noticeably, the key question is no longer…

Wesolowski Sexual Abuse Case a New Approach or Same Old Same Old?

By Mary E. Hunt

…r in the style to which Wesolowski became accustomed. Multiply that by the number of countries where the Vatican has diplomatic relations. I doubt these diplomatic men cook their own meals or wash their own cassocks, no matter how frugal Pope Francis may be. So somebody pays a lot of money to keep this genteel charade in motion. That “somebody” is rank and file Catholics who have little if any say about where their weekly contributions go. Spoiler…

More than Half of Mississippi GOP Primary Voters Believe the President is Muslim

By Sarah Posner

…ondents believe interracial marriage should be illegal; 24% of evangelicals did. Sixty-six percent of respondents in Mississippi do not believe in evolution; among evangelicals that number jumped to 74%. Of all the respondents, 29% believe interracial marriage should be illegal; among evangelicals that number was 33%….

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…sticism. Religion News Service regrets the inaccuracy.” Well, okay. Take a number if you’d like to complain about my own writerly inaccuracies. Still, the trouble with the piece goes beyond an inaccurate (though indisputably grabby) headline. Reporter Kimberly Winston is careful to point out that the Pew report authors have noted “that [the religiously unaffiliated] are by no means homogeneous.” She goes on to highlight Pew researchers’ noting of…

Participant Discredits the Original Ex-Gay Study

By Warren Throckmorton

…dings with the 11 subjects (from page 1555, see below). Bussee was subject number two and Cooper was number one. Both Bussee and Cooper were rated as Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual) before change and a 0 (exclusively heterosexual) after change. Since there was no follow-up, this study has been used to support the proposition that gays could change to straight via religious mediation. For instance, not knowing any of this background at the time,…