religion

Tucker Carlson’s “Great Replacement” Theory Comes From an Anti-US Nazi French Thinker who considered all Americans Negroes

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A hate-filled 18-year-old murdered 10 and wounded 3 African-Americans in Buffalo on Saturday, having penned a rambling screed about replacement theory. The most common version of this whiny idea, imported from the more hysterical fringes of the French Right wing, holds that Jewish capitalists are importing cheap immigrant labor to […]

American Jews

Majority of Americans of all Religions or None want Legal Abortion, except for Evangelicals and 47% of Catholics

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Pew Research Center has a poll out on views about abortion of American religious groups. It shows that in most American religious groups, as well as religious “nones” (people without strong religious beliefs, including agnostics and atheists), the majority believes that abortion should be legal in “all or most […]

Feminism

SCOTUS Dispensing with Roe v. Wade Is Attack on Religious Freedom and Jewish Law

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland (Special to Informed Comment) – The leaked SCOTUS draft to overturn Roe v. Wade leaves a lot to unpack. For Jews, Muslims and other religious minorities, this is a threat to religious liberty in general. Jewish law, (Halacha), does not consider the fetus to be a being with a soul until it is born, […]

Christianity

Cole Interview: The Qur’an, the Crucifixion and Jews: Rebutting Iranian War Propaganda against Byzantium

Juan Cole

Ziryab Jamal interviewed me on my article: Juan Cole, “‘It was made to appear to them so’: the crucifixion, Jews and Sasanian war propaganda in the Qur’ān,” Religion 51, 3 (2021): 404-422. He kindly permitted me to put up the raw video of the interview with video here: Some of the points in the article […]

Evangelicals

Who is More Advanced? 29 Muslim-Majority States will Have more Liberal Abortion Laws than much of America if Roe Falls

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The American Religious Right as a political force is in some ways a creation of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion a woman’s right grounded in Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. Opposition to abortion and to a right to privacy united previously divided factions within […]

Antisemitism

Israeli Authorities still haven’t taken sides on Ukraine Invasion, but Denounce Russia for saying Hitler was Jewish

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli and Ukrainian governments have lambasted the Russian Federation for remarks of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a video interview with an Italian TV station. Lavrov defended Moscow’s creepy allegation that the Ukrainian government is dominated by Nazis, even though the president, Volodomyr Zelensky, is Jewish. Lavrov said that […]

Islam

American Muslim women are finding a unique religious Space at a women-only Mosque in Los Angeles

The Conversation

By Tazeen M. Ali, Washington University in St Louis | – As Ramadan draws to a close, Muslims around the world prepare to celebrate the festival of Eid al-Fitr to mark the end of a month of fasting from dusk till dawn and additional acts of worship. On Eid, as in Ramadan, community is an […]

Christianity

Could Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Satan’s Controlling” the Catholic Church Stance Break up the Republican Party?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In an interview with a far-right Roman Catholic pundit, conspiracy theorist and extremist white nationalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) discussed those church groups, such as Catholic Relief Services, who seek to help resettled undocumented immigrants and refugees as satanic. She said, “What it is, is Satan’s controlling the church. […]

censorship

Disney Targeted on Gay Rights by both DeSantis’ Christian Taliban and Saudi Muslim Obscurantism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis notoriously just came after the Walt Disney Co. for its opposition, if belated, to his “don’t say gay” legislation forbidding school teachers to mention the subject of gay relationships to children under 9. The act vaguely insists that mentions before children older than that had to […]