Category: Social Issues
Flying While Sikh: Why Racial Profiling Matters
This piece originally appeared on Newsweek’s The Daily Beast Most of us hate the indignities of air travel, but for some Americans, Sikhs especially, airport security is humiliating. One Sikh sa... Read More
Mourning the Crimes of Thanksgiving
We recently celebrated a Thanksgiving service in observance of the national American holiday at my church. As we sung our way through several hymns, I felt more troubled than grateful. The words to th... Read More
Intentional Community on the Urban Frontier
“I’m tired of urban living,” I had become accustomed to repeating to friends and family, “and I wonder when I will get fed up, pack my bags, and head to a farm.” My escap... Read More
Giving Thanks, Acting Gratitude
As we approach Thanksgiving in the US, it seems like a good time to revisit the idea of gratitude I wrote about during the most recent Ramadan. The relationship between “gratitude” and “thanks,... Read More
Unrateable Terrors
I help teach a university course on The Holocaust in Historical Context. It is, it should be, impossible to remain unaffected by immersive study of Western Antisemitism and how religious, economic, po... Read More
You use the words you know
One of the unexpected things I have told friends about in my learning to speak Arabic over the past five years is the fact that I am much more talkative in Arabic than I am in English. In Arabic, my... Read More
Sikh Officer and Afghanistan Veteran Fights the Army’s Ban on Beards
This article originally appeared in Newsweek’s The Daily Beast U.S. Army Major Kamal Singh Kalsi comes from a long tradition of military veterans. His great grandfather served in the Royal Briti... Read More
Military Service and Left-Hand Paths
Veterans Day will be observed this year on Monday, Nov. 11, and as I do every year, I’ll first spend some time fretting over whether there should be an apostrophe somewhere in that name, and the... Read More