Forget the Pope—We Need a New Caliph!
With the power vested in us by ourselves, we have chosen ten candidates in the hopes that one of them will win popular acclaim and restore glory to a throne too long left empty.
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afghanistan
Combat Soldiers & Clergywomen: Problematic Equality
It’s the hierarchy and killing, not just the discrimination.
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What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?
I’m not arguing that Islamophobia is racist, or that Islamophobes are racists, because that’s not quite what’s happening. For one thing, Islamophobes embrace ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and racists wouldn’t (indeed couldn’t) do the same. But consider the similarities: the Islamophobe must assume Muslims suffer some sort of pre-Islamic inferiority, sufficient to explain how some (largely non-white) people—actually, a lot of people—not only fell for Islam in the first place, but then stayed down. How long do enforced ideologies last? Nazism: twelve years. Communism: some decades. Islam: Fourteen centuries and counting.
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Global Islam, the Year in Headlines
This list, in links and headlines, just skims the surface. But it gives a sense of what to watch for in 2013.
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New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers
Almost half of the world’s countries have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy, contempt of religion, or religious “hate speech.”
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Which Islamists?: Religion and the Syrian Civil War
A scholar returning from a visit with Syrian opposition figures discusses the role of religion in the Syrian civil war, including whether it’s a sectarian war, what Americans need to know, and whether a post-war Syria will be an Islamic state.
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Four Changes Evangelicals Must Make
In the process of doing all they could to defeat Obama, self-proclaimed and media-designated evangelicals discredited their message and reduced it to a mere political gospel.
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Rage or Courage?: YouTube Terrorism Take Two
What is it about rage that pervades so much thinking about Islam? Start by picking up the latest issues of Time and Newsweek—America’s airport reading—and talking to Google.
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Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuse for Perpetrators—or for Provocateurs
I remember thinking, with Western intervention in Libya, that this all had a familiar ring to it. But perhaps this time would be different, many of us hoped. How, though, one conflict can escape the reality of its conditions and not realize certain consequences is beyond me.
Read MoreWhat Romney Didn’t Tell You about Mormonism at the RNC
Mormons lined up to attest to the candidate’s humanity, but our collective story gets no airtime.
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