The “Religious Freedom” Issue That May Cost the Accused Boston Bomber His Life
Forget the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should worry about “death-qualifying” the jury.
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Inventing “Jihad”
Last week, in the wake of Russian-led investigation, it was reported that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in Russia he was, in fact, more eager to wage war than the Islamist contacts he had traveled to find. Accounts reveal that he arrived in Russia with “an avid interest in waging jihad.”
Read MoreReligion and Violence? Short Answer: “Religion” Does Not Exist in a Vacuum
It is patronizing to reduce religion to “ethics” or “values.”
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Was Islam Responsible for the Boston Bombings, or Was “Internet Islam”?
RD bloggers have rightly asked the question of the depth of the “piety” of the Tsarnaevs. That too misses a vital point. I do not for a moment discount the sincerity of the feelings for Islam by the Tsarnaev brothers. But, what Islam was the object of those feelings? I would offer that it was for an “Internet Islam”—for an abstract, compact, easily rendered Islam, fed by the representations flowing from out of the ether!
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No Room for Non-Theists at Boston Interfaith Service
“We made it exceedingly easy for the Governor’s staff to find us and include us, but they chose not to do so. The exclusion of non-theists today no doubt deepened the hurt the people in the non-theist community are feeling. What principle was served by our exclusion, I don’t begin to understand.”
Read MoreWhen Bad Weeks Happen to Good People
Or maybe it’s not so simple.
Read MoreWhat to Make of the Chechnya Connection? An Expert Weighs In
Jenik Radon, professor of international affairs: “not likely this was part of a larger plot or movement.”
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#PrayForBoston: Prayer as a Meme
So far as I can tell, nothing in our language or in our collective practice, digital or otherwise, holds space for such moments of spiritual pause, however secularized that spirituality might be.
Read MoreNeologism of the Week: ‘Tragicglee’
We saw it after Sandy Hook and Kermit Gosnell, and it’ll probably crop up in discussions of Boston.
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