Category: News
A Fatwa Against Yoga: Mitigating Conflict in the Face of Increasing Fundamentalism in Indonesia
This article focuses on efforts at mitigating conflict that arose between the Indonesian Council of Muslim Scholar (MUI) and the Bali-India Foundation (BIF) in the wake of the former’s issuance of... Read More
The Religious Must Stand Up for Atheists
The interfaith movement is beginning to rack up successes. While outbursts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia (among other expressions of prejudice against religious communities) are nothing new, the g... Read More
Religious Leadership and Violence Prevention after Tucson
This month, it became clear that Americans must do more to prevent violence. A congresswoman was shot in the head in what seems to have been a politically motivated assassination attempt – only ... Read More
The Real News Story
Here’s a news headline for you: The trial begins in Phoenix today for Faleh Hassan Almaleki, the Iraqi immigrant accused of killing his daughter for becoming too Westernized. The prosecution’s arg... Read More
A Blessing for Tucson (and the rest of us)
Like many of you, I have struggled to figure out how to respond to the travesty in Tucson. I was shocked at the carnage, sickened by the loss of life, and outraged at both the perpetrator and the sy... Read More
Bury the Bloody Hatchet: Secularism, Islam, and Reconciliation in Afghanistan
When the US negotiated peace with American Indians just a few years after the American Revolution, they used religiously-inspired, culturally relevant symbols to “bury the hatchet.” However, the... Read More
Tea with Hezbollah
Last Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Shi'i military and political movement Hezbollah, which many would classify as terrorist, toppled the Lebanese government just six months after the d... Read More
Tyler Clementi and Proximate Justice
I went on a run one evening in early October. It was a blustery night, and I ran hard against a misty and diligent headwind along New York City’s Hudson River. Under the bumpy plum-colored cloud... Read More