Search for "cheap last minute airline ticket from san antonio to tucson az phone number 1-800-299-7264"

American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…movement was scheduled to begin in October with an occupation of Freedom Plaza in central Washington. The organizers included Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician who has led the campaign for single-payer health care, and Kevin Zeese, a social activist. I had signed on to this and went to D.C. for the launch events in early October, along with another American Buddhist monk, Ajahn Gunavuddho, and his mother, Ayya Santussika, a Buddhist nun. We had alr…

Istanbul ‘Haven of Sorts’ For LGBT Syrians and Iraqis; Cayman Islands Affirm Marriage Ban with ‘Holy Bible Evidence’; No Room for LGBTs in Malaysia’s ‘Islam-Based’ Human Rights Policy; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…bia from within the Syrian diaspora, but also rising animosity from Turks. Minutes before it was due to begin this year, Istanbul Pride was cancelled under orders from the city’s governor, who cited the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as the reason. Subsequently, the amassing crowds of thousands were faced with riot police, who fired tear gas, plastic pellets and water at them. For many LGBTs, Turkey is a stopping point on the way to hoped-for resett…

Perhaps Islam isn’t the Only Reason Donald Trump Didn’t Recall Muhammad Ali

By Sean O'Neil

After Barack Obama pointed out in a televised address on the San Bernardino shootings that Muslim Americans occupy many familiar social roles including “sports heroes,” Donald Trump offered an incredulous tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/673741357190615040?ref_src=twsrc^tfw Most American sports fans, even casual ones, know of Muhammad Ali, whose picture has unsurprisingly graced the majority of subsequent media reports on the acc…

In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

By Ivan Strenski

…ism” is kicked about. For example: mass shootings by a white Christian, “crazy, unexplainable,” but, mass shootings by a Muslim, “terrorism,” without question. As it happens, Linker writes as if there is something like “terrorism” out there too—only he is writing about religion as if there were something out there with the name “religion” written on it. Instead, Linker could have wagered that that using his definition of “religion” would be more f…

Why The Church Can’t Stop Gun Violence

By Daniel Schultz

…more liberal denominations split on gun control, they’re distracted by any number of other issues: hunger, homelessness, anti-racism, advocating for LGBT rights, refugee resettlement, Israel-Palestine and on and on and on. Anybody who’s spent time in a mainline Protestant church knows that it seems like there’s a new cause every damn day. It’s difficult to coalesce around any one issue. As if that weren’t bad enough, the ongoing self-segregation o…

The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain and Michelle Goldberg

…eel like they’re doing something altruistic when they’re performing their asanas. Much as I love asana practice, I don’t believe this. Do you? I’d like to hear your thoughts about yoga and politics. Modern yoga culture seems vaguely progressive, but a lot of the underlying ideas are about an escape from politics. AJ: I think Devi’s emphasis on self-cultivation at the loss of attention to social justice is alive and well among many practitioners of…

Is ISIS A Sign of the End Times? It May Only Matter That They Believe So

By Haroon Moghul

…n. The Muslim ummah will be weak and divided, though nearly uncountable in number. In the darkest hour, a Mahdi—a ‘rightly-guided’ descendant of Muhammad—will be identified at Mecca’s Great Mosque. He will rally Muslims against oppression without and within, but his success will provoke a bloodier counter-reaction, led by the ‘False Messiah,’ the anti-Christ. When even the Mahdi will be unable to turn the tide, then Jesus, Islam’s actual Messiah,…

Did the Church Create or Co-Opt Human Rights?

By Austin Dacey

…pears in an otherwise meager Wikipedia entry, which cites a 2001 alumni magazine article). The records show that Gildersleeve’s edit replaced Smuts’ “sanctity and ultimate value of human personality” with “dignity and value of the individual.” Subsequently, “value” was changed to “worth” and “human being” to “human person,” a near-return to Smuts’ “personality.” As Moyn and Beitz report, these edits took place without objection or hermeneutical in…

HitchBot Meets His Maker: What a Robot’s Murder Tells Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ago, the Canadian-built hitchBOT left Marblehead, Massachusetts. The goal: San Francisco. It was supposed to be an On the Road-meets-Wall-E jaunt, and a testament to the goodwill of human beings. Instead, over the weekend, somebody in Philadelphia destroyed hitchBOT. Game over. The timing for hitchBOT’s destruction felt oddly appropriate. Late last week, the New York Times published a startling article about Xiaoice, a Microsoft chatbot that’s gai…

It Is About the Hijab: Wheaton College and the Narrowing Criteria for Evangelical Belonging

By Hollis Phelps

…nti-Islamic sentiment and rhetoric in the wake of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, especially when polls have shown that a substantial majority of evangelicals have negative perceptions of Islam. It also demonstrates a deeper problem. The decision by Wheaton strikes me as part of a larger trend among evangelicals to isolate a person’s beliefs from other social, political, and cultural practices. Last month the National Association of Evang…