Religion Dispatches
…o understands the traction of evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment knows that most evangelical voters will never vote for Mitt Romney, especially if they have a choice in someone like Mike Huckabee. Marriott dropping porn won’t begin to make a dent in Romney’s (or even Huntsman’s) evangelical problem. And everybody should also know that—believe it or not—the presidential ambitions of Mitt Romney do not drive the agendas of Mormon-owned multinationa…
Read More…g. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most of the Qur’an that I have memorized myself, and this is more a review than a simple reflective read. Coming to the end of the Qur’an reading is also melancholy, and I forget why I felt I should rush just a few days ago. How will I put my friend down, except for the many occasions I use it in my work, after this? Oh, I know. In my next entry I will tell you the story of…
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…ern those scripts, and how did you come to decide that those four were the most relevant? Walter: That thesis was a very long time germinating for me. I began to think about the connections between those things. I think the two that I would really accent are the military and consumer, and what became clear to me was that the reason we need the absurd military we have—absurdly large and expansive—is we have to protect our consumer advantage in the…
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…uality, nondiscrimination protections, equal access for trans people, and, most frequently, supporting “religious liberty” laws that grant a wide-ranging “license to discriminate.” Even his transition team is stocked with right-wing activists already deeply familiar to those of us who have been covering the fight for LGBT equality over the past decade. That fact, combined with the increasingly apparent influence of Vice President-elect Mike Pence…
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…s claim that “jihad” killed 270 million people—fanciful, hyperbolic, and almo*]}*st endearingly fictitious? Not only is Islamophobia ridiculous, it has violent consequences. I. It’s (Always) the 1950s Islamophobes often argue they’re just criticizing Islam. But simply by prefacing an argument with “I have black friends,” or concluding with it, doesn’t mean you’re not a racist. We have to look deeper to see if “Islamophobia” applies; I’ll use the hijab…
Read More…r album sales spike adding to her personal bottom line, she is nonetheless steadfastly “evolving” towards personal “liberation,” a “self” unhindered by social meanings, homogeneous stereotypes, social demands and cultural policing. With every garment removed, Badu symbolically rid herself of the mythical layers of “black womanhood” that have tormented black female subjects for centuries. In addition, she re-appropriated the material markers of the…
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…report in-depth on the “moral panic” that has led to at least 57 arrests: Most of the detainees are held incommunicado, but one, Sara Hegazi, told her lawyer that guards goaded other inmates to beat her in her cell. On October 1, Egypt’s dreaded secret police force, with its long record of disappearances and torture, got involved, arresting at least two more accused flag-wavers. Egyptians have a term that’s sometimes used for disappearing into th…
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…60s in how they frame and address economic issues, yet have abandoned protest strategies in favor of the model of maintaining a Washington office whose purpose is to lobby members of Congress. Other religious activists are too focused on “events-oriented things” like staged arrests, “where they’ve pre-negotiated the thing, which is not to me civil disobedience.” At the same time, national religious political organizations “paternalistically” decid…
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…as a result these edifices have been the location for many of our nation’s most egregious racial terrorist acts.” In 1822, one of Emanuel’s founders, Denmark Vesey, was one of 35 black men hanged after “white residents of Charleston discovered that one of their worst fears had come true: a slave conspiracy to rise against their masters and slaughter all white residents was afoot in the city.” The church building was also burned to the ground. Afte…
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…irements as a guide, eventually following Arizona’s and Texas’ regulations most closely. A blog post on KFL’s web page, however, suggests that “most provisions in the new Kansas law were taken from the published standards of the National Abortion Federation.” “I am quite sure that most of the provisions are not from our Clinical Policy Guidelines [CPGs],” said Sharon Levin, Vice President and General Counsel for the National Abortion Federation, a…
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