Religion Dispatches
…Romney, what he truly despises is everything Romney represents: the rich, East Coast, insider elites who dominate the Republican Party. Huckabee, the son of a fireman who struggled to make ends meet, effectively wages class warfare against the party insiders and libertarian “faux-cons” in Washington; he lashes out at the likes of National Review magazine and the Club for Growth, whom he calls “the silk-stocking crowd,” for looking down their nose…
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…maneuvering: The world is a mess. Violence in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia threatens to further destabilize regions where chaos breeds religious extremism. The deep roots of the current economic crisis—a global economy powered by fossils fuels and unsustainable American and American-style consumerism—must be carefully but decisively eradicated. And a pernicious but largely unreported militarism at the leading edge of science…
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…Blind Spot is not half bad. The book includes a dazzling chapter by Middle East scholar Michael Rubin on the value of knowing a thing or two about post-1970s Iraqi and Iranian Sh’ia Islam (“Three Decades of Misreporting Iran and Iraq”), which should make any reader wonder how things have not gone exponentially worse for the United States in Iraq. There is also a valuable insider look at human rights initiatives launched by Christian groups during…
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…nd 39, which according to LaHaye are about contemporary Russian and Middle Eastern politics, he claimed that: “For the first time in world history the Russians are working openly with the Arab world; that kind of makes you think [the fulfillment of prophecy] could be very close at hand.” Asked about the impact of such thinking on government policies during the Bush administration, LaHaye began by claiming “I’ve never been asked that before.” He di…
Read More…’s service as vice president for litigation, and as a board member, of the Indiana branch of the ACLU? Or maybe Hamilton’s extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings obstructing Indiana’s implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion?… Or perhaps Hamilton’s inventive invocation of substantive due process to suppress evidence of a criminal defendant’s possession of cocaine, a ruling that, alas, was unanimously reversed b…
Read More…ed by Farooqi’s more formal introduction. He cracked a joke that while the East was developing stories, the West was developing technology, and he wouldn’t have it any other way, showing the deep cultural impact of stories. Both Farooqi and Husain talked about the etiquette of the performance. In a traditional setting, there would be more performer-audience interaction, but in this setting, they had to get through the stories. In addition, rather…
Read MoreOctavia Nasr, CNN’s senior Middle East editor, is no longer with CNN. Her departure from CNN shows a continued lack of consistency when it comes to issues of Arabs and Muslims in the mainstream media. She left for a tweet that said nothing except that she was human. Nasr is of Lebanese descent and proud of her birth land. Because of her professional and personal knowledge of the country, she expressed a sentiment over the death of Marja’ at-Taqli…
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…, many of these hardworking rural and small-town folks felt menaced by big East-coast banks and creeping national corporations. They weren’t opposed to money, business or success per se; rather, they wanted to ensure that some of it came their way. Accordingly, they supported federal legislation that protected the region and its farmers, setting a precedent for using government funds to aid a “favored segment” of the nation. By the twentieth centu…
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…erested in serving Jesus they would be called to places like Peoria or the East Village once in a while. But they’re really only interested in being close to power; without having to do the hard work to actually run for electoral office or get boring bureaucratic jobs inside the government. The radical religious right are the ultimate camp followers. They’re latching onto government for a free ride while decrying it. They want to overthrow the pre…
Read More…ionship with these two women is a foundational myth not only in the Middle East, but also in the west. Whether or not we are believers, we are still awash in its wake as it helps explain many of the battles between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I set the first scene in Nasireya, the Iraqi city that was the location of early battles in the recent war, but which is also known as Ur, the traditional birth place of Abraham and Sarah, the founding…
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