Search for "USA 1800-299-7264 Emirates Airlines Phone Number , Reservations "

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…the values found in your Charter for Compassion. How might you respond? No, no, I entirely agree—and make it clear in the book—that fundamentalists make great use of modernity and that these are all essentially modern movements that could have taken root in no time other than our own. Fundamentalists may have retreated from some aspects of modernity, but they are themselves modern people and this has profoundly affected their vision. As I insist…

Grab ‘n Go – Investigative Thriller Follows Covert Efforts to Control the Source of Life But Comes Up Short on Analysis

By Peter Laarman

…hen confronted, the smooth-talking CEO of the operation readily admits that, yes, in this fashion the US is basically exporting its water, but he goes on to argue that it’s better than open warfare over the increasingly scarce source of all life (which, along with food, he refers to as “empire commodities.”). In dramatic film fashion, scary music and all, the reporting team then reveals that they’ve obtained something they call “the trove”: a mass…

Religious Conservatives Mobilize Internationally Against Spanish Nondiscrimination Bill; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…every opportunity they get to arrest people perceived to be LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex]”. “It is a terrible situation. People will continue to get arrested until something is done about the unfriendly legal environment,” says Bar. The same month, 40 men were arrested in Lagos for “performing homosexual acts.” MassResistance, an extreme anti-gay organization based in the U.S., announced in August that the leader of its…

Leave Your Stereotypes at the Door: 10Q on “Keeping it Halal”

By John O'Brien

…ike to be a Muslim young person—or a young member of any minority religious, immigrant, or ethnic group—in America these days. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I hope readers will leave with a sense of these young Muslims as complex, multi-dimensional people. One of my sociological heroes, Mitch Duneier, says that he believes one of the central powers of ethnography as a social scientific method is its ability…

House Health Care Bill Discriminates Against Religious Freedom

By Gordon D. Newby

…ruction of a fetus prevents a soul from participating in its karmic journey, but, following the principle of doing the least harm, abortion when it involves saving the life of the mother is held by many Hindus as permissible. Also, some Hindus hold that personhood only begins at the age of three months, a doctrine similar to the Muslim and Jewish notions of ensoulment. The Primacy of Individual Conscience Finally, it should be remembered that on t…

Global LGBT Recap: Religious Leaders Support Persecution as Countries Vie in Homophobia Olympics

By Peter Montgomery

…eople, which could lead to death sentences for gay Muslims: Mubarak Ibrahim, 28, was ordered to lie on a bench while the 20 lashes were administered in front of a packed courtroom. He said he was misled into the act of sodomy by the principal of the high school he was attending and has not committed a homosexual act since. Judge Nuhu Mohammed said spared Ibrahim the sentence of death by stoning because the crime occurred so many years ago and beca…

Is Religion Wrecking Our Air?

By Jay Wexler

…ment that people generally do not want to mess with. Touching it, eating it, or, most dangerously, breathing in the vapors that it releases can be extremely dangerous, potentially causing respiratory problems and damage to the nervous system. Given the perils of inhaling mercury vapors, it might be surprising to learn that some religious believers actually sprinkle the silver liquid metal inside their homes to ward off evil spirits. The practice p…

Come Hell or High Water: How the Melodrama of Disaster Leaves Us Vulnerable

By Noah Berlatsky

…es to this death in A Tale of Two Cities, or when Superman saves the day in, well, any story where Superman saves the day. You can see the bias towards the tropes of melodrama in the attitude towards climate change in the United States. Climate change deniers, of course, refuse to think about systemic problems altogether: for them, each extreme weather event is its own isolated exciting disaster, to be confronted and solved individually. But even…

Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

By Haroon Moghul

…s this?: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain. That’s 15 countries, including the most populous, Egypt. And while I’m not sure about The Sudan, there are of course strong restrictions around women’s dress in Saudi Arabia. That’s possibly 2 countries for the other side. (In fact, in the whole Muslim world, only two other countries legally mandate…

Missing the Forest for the Witches

By Joseph Laycock

…l sites expressing positive or neutral views about Native American religion, Wicca, or new religious movements. In addition to the obvious free speech issues involved in Internet censorship, The ACLU argues that Netsweeper privileges Christian perspectives by categorizing minority religions as “occult” and “criminal skills.” Visitors to the Salem Library cannot, for example, access the Wikipedia page on Wicca, though they’re free to read the Catho…