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Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

…r, as delivered to his army, to ISIS’ practices. I pronounce the Prophet’s best friend a better interpreter of Islam than poorly reconstructed Ba’athists on the Muslim margins.) Suleiman stressed: “Freeing slaves” is so frequently mentioned as a meritorious act in the Muslim tradition that, in the 8th and 9th centuries, biographies of Prophetic companions cited, as virtues, manumission; Muhammad’s wife, Aisha, was lauded for “freeing six hundred s…

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“Who Was Muhammad, Was He Violent?”: Teaching Islam Ten Years
after 9/11

…ces. On the other hand, the attacks of 9/11 have brought forth some of the best this nation has seen. I recall receiving flowers at the office door of our Muslim Student Association at the same time our members reported being spat on. Responding to such bigotry, civic leaders, faith-based coalitions, and academics charged the battle lines of public discourse in the best spirit of humanism to show that Islam, like all other religions, was at its co…

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Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

…eption is that yoga is a mere commodity of global market capitalism or, at best, “spiritual, not religious.” On the one hand, many outsiders to popularized yoga profoundly trivialize it by reducing it to mere commodities and impotent borrowings from or “rebrandings” of traditional, authentic religious products. On the other hand, many insiders frequently avoid categorizing yoga as religion, preferring to call it spiritual or to invoke other non-ex…

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A Furious Sadness: Conversation with Christian Protester of Nazi-Saluting Trump Supporter

…my eye, as did its closing paragraphs: The world is broken, I learned that best from Christianity. But I don’t believe even one thing on this Earth is beyond repair, and I learned that from Christianity too. You don’t have to share my belief in Christianity, but I am asking you to stand up against hate. Or this woman’s slanted arm never bears a greater weight than her own ignorance. She may never get the shot to understand love, living in the worl…

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Jesus’ Language More Complicated Than Experts Claim

…bbouni “is, in fact, excellent Mishnaic Hebrew” because “It is attested in Codex Kaufmann of Mishna Ta`anit 3.8.” This sounds impressive until one actually reads Codex Kaufmann, a priceless source for early Rabbinic Hebrew. What Buth neglects to mention is that this form appears only once, as opposed to over 50 instances of the normal Hebrew forms “rab” or “rabbi.” He also doesn’t mention that, by contrast, this Aramaic term for “lord” is overwhel…

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Pamela Geller in Brooklyn: Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Futility of Arguing with a Bigot

…on and the Defense of Our Freedoms.” (‘I’m not a scientist, but some of my best friends are canyons.’) You’ll have to RSVP. Stupid’s the coffee, and First Amendment’s the cake. 7:33 Geller can’t get in more than a sentence or two before the students applaud her with deafening conviction. They’ve decided to mock her with faux enthusiasm. At least, it’ll start so. It’ll end just as I predict it will: With Geller running away. 15 years ago, that’s wh…

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A Muslim Reflects on Christian Theologian (and UCLA Coach) John Wooden

…am most proud was when I graduated from University College in 1987 as the best male athlete. As I tell my students at LMU, I don’t look like much now, being old and slow and fat, but I used to be somebody. When I moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1997 to start teaching at Cal State Northridge, I sought out Coach Wooden. That was another of the amazing things about him. He was approachable, answering his own phone and mail, meeting with complete…

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A Pastor Takes on BP in New Orleans

…ht be transferable to other types of available labor, and to “build on the best practices learned from Katrina and Rita.” A United Neighborhoods Approach Some of those best practices were honed at the Mary Queen Viet Nam church, where those helping to rebuild gathered, eating together from their own hands for months in the flood’s aftermath. They didn’t stop at bricks and mortar; community activism gave birth to organizations such as the Mary Quee…

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Satanic FOIA Reveals Deep Confusion About 1st Amendment

The Satanic Temple, best known for its offer to build a monument to Satan in an attempt to challenge the Constitutionality of a Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma, recently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain any correspondence surrounding the issue. Lucien Greaves, the Temple’s organizer, sent me over a hundred letters, petitions, and audio files of voice mail messages addressed to the Oklahoma Capital Preservation Com…

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An Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin on the Feminist and Abolitionist Founder Who Has Slipped into a Memory Hole

…lavery that the Jeffersonians forgive.” In other words, Paine embodied the best of both men and, remarkably, without the serious historical baggage nearly all in the founding generation carry. Raskin speaks with his customary brilliance and fire, but there’s an undeniably genuine admiration that leads me to ask “How much do you love Thomas Paine?” “We named our son after him, Tommy,” Raskin begins and the conversation becomes deeply personal. In h…

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