religion

( The Times of Israel) – Could someone earn a commendation for deliberately breaking the holiest object ever created, one that was crafted and inscribed by God Himself? According to a midrash [scripture interpretation], this is exactly what happened to Moses. In our weekly scripture reading, Exodus 30:11–34:35 [“Ki Tisa”], Moses shatters the tablets after […]

Alawites

Syria: End Coastal Killing Spree, Protect Civilians

Human Rights Watch

Summary Executions, Indiscriminate Shootings, Outrages on Personal Dignity. ( Human Rights Watch – (New York) – Summary executions and other atrocities have taken place in Syria’s coastal region following insurgent attacks on Syrian security forces and during subsequent government security operations, with the Alawite community bearing the brunt of the violence, Human Rights Watch said today. […]

Christan Nationalists

Secretive Evangelical D.C. Influence Project Appears to Be Running a Group House for Right-Wing Lawmakers

ProPublica

By Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski ( ProPublica ) – For a project explicitly designed to influence Congress, Steve Berger’s operation has left a scant paper trail. The archconservative evangelical pastor, who started a D.C. nonprofit a few years ago to shape national policy, does not file lobbying reports. His group does not […]

Christianity

Why White Christian Nationalists are Freaked out: Liberals are More likely to be Non-Religious than Christian

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ironically, White Christian nationalism has captured the U.S. government despite its steep decline in popularity among the public. The Pew Research Center has released a poll on the state of religion in the United States. From the point of view of contemporary American history, Christianity in the U.S. has collapsed […]

Balkans

Trump Official Destroying USAID Secretly Met With off-limits Bosnian Serb Islamophobes

ProPublica

By Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester | – ( ProPublica ) – Before Peter Marocco was selected to dismantle America’s entire foreign aid sector on behalf of President Donald Trump, he was an official with the State Department on a diplomatic mission. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Marocco was a senior political appointee […]

Salafis

Syria’s New Government is already Oppressing Women, Posing a dire Threat to their Future

The Conversation

By Vrinda Narain, McGill University and Fatemeh Sadeghi, UCL (The Conversation) – As the international community celebrates the fall of another dictatorship following the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime, the future of women’s rights remains precarious. Global leaders are commending Syria’s liberation and discussing the return of 5.5 million refugees, but women’s rights advocates are […]

Featured

The Qur’an’s Celebration of Diverse Skin Colors: Forms of Equality in the Muslim Scripture

Juan Cole

I am reprinting part of this essay that appeared in Renovatio, the literary magazine of a small Muslim liberal arts college — Zaytuna — in Berkeley, Ca. The Qur’an is the most hated book in America that no one has ever read, and there are already new visa bans on Muslims deriving from severe misunderstandings […]

Antisemitism

Death shaded the Life of this Holocaust historian. The cancer Memoir he began in Hospital was a final ‘Act of Love’

The Conversation

By Tess Scholfield-Peters, University of Technology Sydney (The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The […]

religion

How the US Religious Right is making Religion Unpopular

The Conversation

By Galen Watts, University of Waterloo (The Conversation) – In 1961, less than one per cent of Canadians identified as having no religion. In 2021, 43 per cent of those between 15 and 35 considered themselves religiously unaffiliated. Organized religion — and especially Christianity — is in decline. Secularization is advancing apace. Most sociologists of […]