new york city

(A)theologies

What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

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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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Election 2012, Politics/Law

Politics in a Time of Crisis: Sandy? Blame Socialism

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If there is one thing people need during a national disaster, it is functioning and effective government. If there is one time we need redistributive justice, it is during a crisis. Much of politics perhaps just comes down to what is, and is not, a crisis—a hurricane I hope we can all agree on. But what about climate change? Or health care? What is life-threatening? What is an emergency?

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Culture

Looking at Death: Images of 9/11, Before, During, and After

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What might it mean for a synagogue, a church, a mosque, or a temple, to set up a video screen in its sanctuary and play these images of death from September 11—and then turn around and respond to them? What reinvented rituals might result from a ritualized, contextualized reception of these images? Such communal framing gets us beyond the questions of morbid voyeurism because it eliminates the one-way dimension and places images within a social setting. It further allows us to reflect and come to terms with dying, thereby stirring the potential for a good death. 

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