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‘Biblical’ Stoning About Mental Health, Money, & Mormonism Too

By Joanna Brooks

…from Seidman’s family) to give him power of attorney over his affairs. In January, Thomas beat Seidman to death with a sock full of rocks, then justified his actions by accusing Seidman (whom his brother characterized as “asexual”) of making homosexual advances and claiming that the Old Testament prescribed stoning for gay people. The better we tell this story, the more complicated it gets. Yes, it is a story about how the Bible lends itself to p…

Abdul-Rauf’s Latest Park51 Fail

By Hussein Rashid

…Abdul-Rauf. The Park51 team most recently issued a press release in early January, trying to move the project forward. In the intervening months since the PR fiasco of the summer of 2010, the group has apparently made some progress, addressing many of the concerns made here on RD. They have a large, fully-functional and fully-professional team, and have cleaned up their online presence. In addition, they have controlled their messaging, and the v…

Graham’s Muslim Brotherhood Conspiracy Theory Not New

By Sarah Posner

…slim Brotherhood as the puppeteer of the rebellion there. As I reported in January, four days into the Egyptian uprising, WorldNetDaily’s Aaron Klein was claiming that Nobel Laureate and pro-democracy dissident Mohamed ElBaradei “is an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama administration has been working with him to coordinate the protests in Egypt.” (emphasis added). In my long piece about the shari’ah conspiracy theory industry earlier th…

Tokyo Governor Says Tsunami is Divine Punishment—Religious Groups Ignore Him

By Levi McLaughlin

…are likely to look askance at explicit expressions of religious faith. The number of negative responses is particularly high among younger people in Japan; according to research by Tokyo professor of religion Nobutaka Inoue, only ten percent of college students in Japan will affirm that they are religious. Given those numbers, one might conclude that Japan is not a religious country. But Governor Ishihara’s outburst and the rapid response by relig…

In ‘God Hates Fags’ Case, Free Speech Trumps Free Exercise

By Julie Ingersoll

…ed First Amendment Free Exercise claims involved in this case. And then in January, RD contributor Bruce Ledewitz elaborated on the point, explaining wonderfully how this came to be. [Journalist Robert Marus wrote a response piece titled The Quietly Crumbling Wall of Separation — ed] One might have expected this case to revolve around the Phelps’ claim that “God Hates Fags” is a protected religious expression. In fact, it was the father of slain L…

Will San Francisco Ban Circumcision?

By Shalom Goldman

…r of an indignant-looking infant wondering, “You want to cut off what?” In January, the story reached the Israeli media. Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper of record, sent a reporter to interview San Francisco Rabbis. Rabbi Micah Hyman of Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in San Francisco, responded to the intactivists’ claim that circumcision was brutal. “It’s not a brutal ritual; it’s emotional, and deep, but it’s very powerful.” And for Israeli…

CPAC Speaker Admires Geert Wilders

By Sarah Posner

…liar with the Frank Gaffney vs. Suhail Khan battle, which I reported on in January. (UPDATE: I’ve uploaded a copy of the ugly flyer Hughes was passing out.) As I discuss in the piece, there was one official and explicitly Islamophobic panel at the conference, the essential premise of which was that shari’ah law is coming to America, beware, beware! The panel included former CIA director James Woolsey, activist-scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and National…

What is ‘The Square’ that Beat Mubarak?

By H.A. Hellyer

It started on the 25th of January, 2011. All that I’ve been writing about on Religion Dispatches in the past 18 days—it all started then. The creation of ‘the Square’; something that we cannot describe as simply Tahrir Square in the centre of Cairo, nor a ‘revolution’ in the assumed meaning of the word. A revolution has leaders—the Square did not. A revolution usually has huge amounts of violence from those revolting—the Square did not. But where…

Confession Fail: iPhone App Controversy Muddies the Sacramental Waters

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ich direction they go.” A kerfuffle this week over the introduction of an iPhone and iPad app with formal backing from at least one Roman Catholic bishop, Confession: A Roman Catholic App, has highlighted the degree to which such new spiritual technologies make it difficult for any of us to predict into what liturgical, theological, or spiritual ditch they might send believers. A more earnestly spiritual and sacramental effort, the Confession app…

Conservatism’s Bulldog Claims Psychology Tilts Liberal

By Ira Chernus

…l psychologist at the University of Virginia, is making quite a splash. In January he set off a media storm by chastising his fellow psychologists for liberal bias. As the New York Times recently reported, he told the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology that its members “are a ‘tribal-moral community’ united by ‘sacred values’ that hinder research and damage their credibility.” But that was just the most recent move…