Religion Dispatches
As soon as it became clear that the older of the two suspects in the Boston bombing had become a more fervent Muslim in recent years, commentators began to point to religion as the culprit. But is it?
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The recent spate of mass killers all sought to solve their problems with a certain expression of gun violence that maps easily onto the masculinist roots of Christianity and other religious traditions—particularly in more conservative expressions.
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There’s been a lot of talk in the American atheist movement about social justice, but why doesn’t it include justice for religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs?
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We may never know what triggered Wade Michael Page’s rage on that Sunday morning at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. What we do know is that Sikhism can be a profound source of human healing in the wake of tragedy.
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What it means when tragedy strikes in real time.
Read MoreSomething like the immortal words of one prosecutor to the KKK: “kiss my ass.”
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Something is deeply wrong when the burden remains exclusively on the community itself to conduct all of the outreach, to articulate its values and defend its contributions to the rest of society. Should the educational burden be entirely on the community? There is a deep isolation, not to mention exhaustion, in that “cultural tax”—especially after a tragedy. Do we as Americans simply leave the community to articulate itself to its neighbors? Do we ask them to teach us at the same time as they are burying their dead? Or are there ways that fellow travelers can participate in the educational process?
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