Religion Dispatches
…n Languages at Brigham Young University, editor in chief of the BYU Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, and author of the book Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East, said in an interview that growing up as a Mormon in California in the 1960s, most Latter-Day Saints were “very militantly pro-Israeli.” That stance has evolved, however, said Peterson, describing the evolution as a “mellowing” as people have gotten to know Muslims and di…
Read More…a relationship of convenience than an article of faith. It saves him, at least, from having to articulate a post-Bush conservative foreign policy vision, as some have asked him to do. But he’s a pragmatist not a visionary, and in this his foreign policy resembles his economic policy: it’s designed in its public presentation to appeal to key voting demographics, but essentially values-neutral and centered on defending and promoting the interests…
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…tionate share of private and governmentally subsidized resources over (at least) the last two generations. An ethic derived both from nineteenth-century manifest destiny and twentieth-century suburban developmentalism provides a powerful impetus to the sprawl that has expanded locally, both eastward towards the great plains and westward into the foothills and fire zones. And that same ethic will spur prayers for, and the insistence on, rebuilding…
Read More…is anti-Islam views, told The Associated Press from Washington that he was promoting the video on his website and on certain TV stations, which he did not identify. Both depicted the film as showing how Coptic Christians are oppressed in Egypt, though it goes well beyond that to ridicule Muhammad—a reflection of their contention that Islam as a religion is inherently oppressive. “The main problem is I am the first one to put on the screen someone…
Read More…has helped transform Egypt, who was a friend in a key region of the Middle East, into a center of leadership for Islamists. “The United States and its leaders should fight against Radical Islam and violent jihadism; and instead stand for freedom of religion and conscience and for the equality of women. In Egypt, strong advocacy by the United States for meaningful democracy which protects the rights of minorities, including Copts, would have promot…
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…ation act of 1965), the growing wealth of Americans, and the waning of the East Coast WASP establishment. These factors, he claims, led to a weakening of Christian orthodoxy and its hold over the American spirit. The traditional churches responded by either capitulating to cultural trends or by exercising a culture warrior’s resistance. Douthat’s Heretics Gallery: Scholars, Pulp Novelists, and Conspiracy Theorists What did grow in this sterile so…
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…more were made refugees. Caldwell makes no mention of any of this, nor of Eastern Europe’s ancient Muslim communities. There have been Eastern European Muslims for longer than Protestantism has existed, and yet Islam is still, centuries on, the Other; notable only as immigrant victimizer. As a public intellectual one might expect that he has some interest in another perspective, that he might give a holistic account… Caldwell’s Other Crisis Thoug…
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…n we talk about Egypt’s Salafis isn’t because we’re debating theology, at least not primarily—I don’t think we’re actually concerned with the specifics of Islamic thought. We’re more worried about what Salafism and Islamism generally means for our interests, values, and the Muslim world. At bottom, our concerns over Salafis are concerns over what they’ll do when they’re in power. So we try to figure out where they fall in the continuum of what Co…
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…es continue to seethe. It remains to be seen whether changes in the Middle East will draw the venom, or fuel yet more grievances. That said, even if it is too soon to write the epitaph to extremism, I don’t doubt that Muslims have both the motive and the capacity to contain its surge. They make up the majority of victims, after all, and the resilience of Muslim social and family structures make it relatively easy to say when a co-religionist is st…
Read More…permanent frontier. In 1980, twelve thousand Jews lived in the West Bank, “east of democracy,” Beinart writes; now they number more than three hundred thousand, and include Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s wildly xenophobic Foreign Minister. Lieberman has advocated the execution of Arab members of parliament who dare to meet with leaders of Hamas. His McCarthyite allies call for citizens to swear loyalty oaths to the Jewish state; for restrictions on h…
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