Religion Dispatches
…wanted Osama bin Laden; in that there is cause for profound spiritual reflection. There is also, I hope, cause to end any confusion of what he and his followers did with what Muslims want and what Islam teaches. I pray we find in his anonymous burial, in the sea south of Pakistan, that at the end, none of the peoples he claimed to be fighting on behalf of wanted him; more than that, to the few grumbling voices out there, President Obama’s framing—…
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…es to Hank Williams. Our friends are second-generation American Muslims of South Asian, Arab, and African heritage, white converts, and beautiful toddlers of interracial marriages. Watching them interact, I am content, and hopeful for our future here. My husband and I push the stroller through the neighborhood after our friends leave. The festival is officially over but children are still dancing on a wooden floor as the crew dismantles the stage…
Read More…not at all convinced that they would make a difference for Pain in Iowa or South Carolina, although they more obviously could in Florida. Frum, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, complains in his column that Palin snubbed the group’s offers to sponsor her Israel trip, as it has done for other presidential hopefuls, instead booking it through a Christian tour agency. He thinks, perhaps, that Palin is miffed that he and other RJC board memb…
Read More…bee won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, “McCain and Thompson kneecapped him [in South Carolina], claimed he wasn’t a fiscal conservative.” Then, Lewis maintained, when the candidates moved on to Florida, “Fox News reported that Huckabee wasn’t campaigning there.” Sean Hannity, she continued, “said it on his radio show and wouldn’t correct it” and it was an “outright lie.” “You could’ve made a case for election tampering,” she added. I haven’t, naturall…
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…map, a staple of humanitarians that shows the true vastness of the global south. The burden on these men feels just as vast. Mercifully, though, their way of life doesn’t allow for a whole lot of time for agonizing. As Trappist monks—the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, officially—they gather in the church several times a day to chant prayers, from before dawn until after dusk. In between, they’re busy with “spiritual reading” and o…
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….” Thus spake Jim DeMint, the ultra-conservative Republican senator from South Carolina, in a recent radio interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. No, I don’t listen to Tony Perkins. I found the quote thanks to Think Progress blogger Scott Keyes, who offered what he calls this “outlandish statement” as an example of conservatives’ tendency “to dress their political ideology in religious language.” Maybe so. Politicians typica…
Read More…g happen in the Middle East prophetically? You are seeing the King of the South come together with lightning speed. Egypt has an army of one million men armed with 1500 Abram Tanks which are America’s best. We sold them to Egypt along with hundreds of our latest and greatest fighter jets because Egypt was controlled by Mubarak who was America’s friend. Can you imagine what Israel faces with Iran, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Russia coming after the…
Read More…n a decade Kohler was shipping the work to new non-union facilities in the South. Just last year the current magnate—yet another Herbert Kohler—pushed through a greatly weakened contract for the small number of Local 833 members still employed in Wisconsin. I say all this to make the point that American business and its “business-friendly” sock puppets like Gov. Scott Walker will stop at nothing—nothing—to roll back worker rights and worker securi…
Read More…If the Iowa Renewal Project — if not the ones in later primary states like South Carolina and Florida — helped Huckabee win the caucuses there, having other presidential hopefuls will certainly dilute the meetings’ apparent endorsement of one candidate over another. One thing is certain though: there won’t be any dilution of the “Judeo-Christian heritage” themes by any of the candidates who want to get the Iowa advantage, even supposedly culture w…
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…ritish imperialism, and the nefarious designs of the English monarchy upon South Asia—you can’t make this stuff up—and concluded by suggesting that India and Pakistan, which were apparently on the verge of nuclear war, form a common currency and become one country. In the third and thus far bloodiest of the revolts sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, giant Libya, a nation the size of Alaska with fewer people than New York City (6.3 m…
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