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Obsession with Attackers’ Backgrounds Misses the Point of Terrorism

By Ali Olomi

…sentiment, and to eliminate any zone of co-existence, thus making their us-vs-them vision a reality. Should Daesh or a similar terrorist group be behind the recent attempts in the US, the question we should be asking is why? The pain and the terror are the immediate results of their attack, but they can also be obfuscating. We know for example that Daesh is very eager to see a Trump presidency. Recent analysts have uncovered chatter in which Daes…

Muslims in America, Fifty Years Later: New Poll Shows Pride and Optimism In the Face of Bias

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…igration that largely prohibited immigrants from countries perceived as non-white. Millions of non-white people have immigrated to the United States since then, and perhaps two million of them have been Muslim. Even though the poll does not count the number of mosques in the country, other data reveal a similar picture there: In 1967, there were perhaps fewer than 200 mosques in the country. Today, there are likely more than 2,000. In 1967, the si…

Know-Nothing Christians Irate Over Obama Comments

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…e suggestion that the president, a self-identifying Christian of some quasi-high-church Protestant persuasion, cannot possibly be written off as anti-Christian in the way he has been. Those on the left need to pay closer attention to Christian history. Christians have never done much more than argue about the matters of primary importance to them. Every tradition is, in part, an extended argument through time concerning matters deemed especially i…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…at led me to research and write about the White supremacy movement. Between 1985 and 1994, I was the research director at the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network). Why did you decide to write Blood and Politics? It became apparent to me that much of the received wisdom about White supremacists was simply wrong. And I wanted to write a book that did not just say what I thought was correct, but I wanted to show it…

We’ve Finally Begun to Confront White Christian Nationalism; But What About Its Source Text?

By Dianne M. Stewart

…e Israelites, were guided into the promised land of Canaan through divinely-sanctioned war, colonialism, and genocide against Israel’s enemies. Warrior was also among a number of scholars who emphasized that African Americans were not the only Americans to identify with the Israelites. White European settlers had also adopted the Israelite Exodus narrative as they understood themselves as God’s chosen people who had a right to claim their promised…

World AIDS Day: Sacralizing Change

By Susan Henking

…persist in homophobic attacks on gay men and lesbians and emphasize foreign-mission-based attention to HIV/AIDS while turning a blind eye to the pandemic’s ongoing significance as a form of social injustice in the United States. These are an important part of sustaining the virulence of AIDS/HIV in people’s lives. While Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church is certainly an extremist in claiming that “God Hates Fags,” he is not the only religious…

America, Religious Values, and the Death Penalty; Or, If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates…

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ision was a narrow one (5-4) and ran to nearly 300 pages, as opposed to the 18-page decision in Witherspoon. Here once again the question of what constitutes the proper role of a jury was at issue. In essence, juries in capital cases had what the majority referred to as “untrammeled discretion” in deciding who received a death sentence and who not. Unsurprisingly, prejudices were revealed in the statistical record of who received a death sentence…

Latina in America: What CNN Got Wrong

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…ltered regarding the rampant racism and prejudice against Latino/as in the United States. But after watching the CNN documentary I am overwhelmed with the urge to never leave Miami, because clearly the majority the United States clearly hates Latino/as. In addition, I finished the documentary thoroughly depressed. Is this really who we are? NO! I want to scream. Latino/as in religion, or more accurately, Christianity, were discussed the first even…

The Cynical Use of “Freedom of Religion”

By Kate Childs Graham

In response to the injustices of the Second World War, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations’ General Assembly adopted what it called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). On this, the 60th anniversary of the Declaration, it is time to take a look at the ways that one of the human rights it listed, the idea of religious freedom, is being used, ironically, to further discriminatory agendas. Here is what the Declaration has to say ab…

What Most Critics Missed About Dustin Lance Black’s ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’

By Cristina Rosetti

…he LDS Church began the long process of ending the practice of polygamy. In 1890, under pressure from the United States government that sought to seize Church assets and disincorporate the religion, the Church released a document referred to as the “Manifesto” that announced the formal end to the practice. At least, this is the most often told history of Mormon polygamy. However, for those who still believe in the practice, there’s another history…