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Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…s of military thought today, perhaps religion served a similar function in times before. One needn’t look any further than the Psalms: “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust… His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” Martial imagery pervades religious writings from around the world, even if interpretation over time often renders it “just” metaphorical. Bousquet rightly warns us not to belittle metaphors; they “constitute a means of o…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…history—the same firm built both buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massi…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…sumptions shattered. Bernard Lewis asked: ‘What went wrong?’ Dawkins is at best a meager echo of such sentiments. Because if we ask what went wrong in the Muslim world, we must ask what went wrong everywhere. Africa, the Americas, Australia, East Asia—all were colonized or otherwise interfered with. The few Muslim governments that attempted to beat the West at its own game were quickly invaded and, albeit with great difficulty, put down. Euthanize…

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

By April L. Bogle

…point out that sister Anu was the real tennis star of the family. (Ranked number one in India for several years and a three-time National Champion, Anu Peshawaria represented India at Wimbledon, the Asian Games, and Universiad.) Sports also taught Bedi to love the fun of challenge. “I learned that the energy you put into it is proportionate to the end result—and that luck sometimes plays into it,” she said, recalling an international tennis match…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…was caught after the murder, fleeing halfway across the state, he had the phone number of an Operation Rescue leader on his dashboard—the tip of the iceberg in terms of the broader connections he’d built with anti-abortion extremists. The church, Roeder would later testify, emerged as the only place he could find a shot at Tiller, around the elaborate security measures the doctor had learned to follow at his clinic and home. “Justifiable homicide…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…fast and furiously. I am aware that I’m uncharacteristically not using the best manners. Am I medicating with food—am I trying to fill the God-shaped vacuum? I laugh at myself then. Will the atheists at last bring me back to the fold? I eat my red velvet cupcake knowing I am not willing to claim that I know the whole and absolute truth anymore. I am living with the questions. I can do that. I hand the bread to Nancy, psychologist and skeptic and s…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…, even if she’s loosely based on Bob Weir’s go-go dancer girlfriend of the time. The woman this song pays tribute to had “got everything delightful” because she isn’t real. She’s a projection of the imagination of her time—an earth mother moving through an idealized natural world. In another era, this might be a poem by Shelly or Keats. And that’s where the layers of criticism come up against the thing about the Dead that makes picking them apart…

Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder And Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination

By Arthur Waskow

…d raw, to raise the Jewish roof—but I was also able to find a community of searchers, for whom learning came out of the searching. This process has now been the living center of my life for half a century. I have moved to a different city, taught and learned in different schools, prayed in different gatherings from other prayer-books I have helped to write myself. I was drawn to a new understanding of the early rabbis as radicals, and studied to b…

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Humans

By Amina Wadud

…intentions, and take up ihram at some point before I arrive in Jeddah. The best times are supposed to be immediately after one of the five prayers. As it stands, in order to clear security, I leave my house for the airport in San Francisco before the time for fajr prayer is even started. This also disrupts my plans for how to get to the airport. I don’t want to leave my car there for 3 weeks. I had planned to take my bags on Saturday and leave the…

The Pope in My Pocket; We Are All Dilettantes Now

By Michael A. Elliott

…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…