Reading Time: 4 minutes In some ways, the malign influence of Christianity makes the entire planet unsafe—the alliance between US fundamentalists seeking to bring on the Second Coming and Jewish fanatics in Israel and Palestine is just one example, and it nicely demonstrates that the outsize power of America gives its many fundamentalists global reach, too. This is why […]
Daniel James Sharp
Daniel James Sharp is an independent writer and Deputy Editor of Areo Magazine. He is currently working on a book about Christopher Hitchens for Pitchstone Publishing. He lives in Fife, Scotland.
Posted inWar and Peace
Did it work? Iraq 20 years after the US invasion
Reading Time: 11 minutes March 20 marks two decades since the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq. In those 20 years, it has become de rigueur to malign the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the attempt to build a free and prosperous Iraq. Such critics often tell us that the intervention was always going to fail and that this failure was utterly foreseeable, that nothing but catastrophe could come of invading. But ‘catastrophic’ is too mild a word to describe the state of Iraq since 2003.
Posted inReligious News
Disestablish it for its own good: The Church of England and gay marriage
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · Disestablish It For Its Own Good – The Church Of England And Gay Marriage | Daniel James Sharp I followed with amusement the recent fracas over same-sex marriage in the Church of England. For half a decade, the Church has been debating its doctrines relating to sexuality, and the thought of gentle Anglicans […]
Posted inPolitics
The Queen is dead: a republican’s response
Reading Time: 6 minutes Don’t be bullied into silence. This is precisely the moment we should be talking about the validity of monarchy in modern Britain.
Posted inFree Expression
Love and anger, liberty and literature: a personal response to the attack on Salman Rushdie
Reading Time: 6 minutes OnlySky · Love and anger: a personal response to the attack on Salman Rushdie | Daniel James Sharp On the afternoon of August 12, I opened my phone to absent-mindedly scroll through the endless drivel of Facebook. But almost as soon as I began, I stopped. A post containing “Salman Rushdie stabbed,” or words to […]
Posted inCulture
No jubilation for the Jubilee: Why the monarchy must end
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · No jubilation for the Jubilee: Why the monarchy must end The Platinum Jubilee, which celebrates 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, is everywhere in the UK. The front pages of newspapers and magazines blare their worship of an old woman and her family. The television news is given over to segments on […]
Posted inWar and Peace
A horrific ‘gay purge’ in Chechnya shows the limits of our moral attention
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 2019, a brutal ‘gay purge’ took place in the Russian republic of Chechnya. It was not the first. Since 2017, gay men have been hunted, abducted, and tortured by the Chechen authorities. Some have been murdered. The story was briefly covered by Western media. Thinking that the return (yet again) of concentration camps to […]
Posted inReligion
Joseph Ratzinger, God’s own monster: An obituary before the fact
Reading Time: 13 minutes OnlySky · Joseph Ratzinger, God's own monster: An obituary before the fact | Daniel James Sharp When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, boarded the plane at Ciampino Airport, Rome, he wondered if he would be greeted by stern-faced German policemen when he landed in Munich. Since giving up his job as God’s […]