Reading Time: 5 minutes When religious fundamentalists run out of enemies, they just make new ones. A case in point is Afghanistan, where two violent and repressive Islamist groups are now fighting each other.
Islam
Posted inWar and Peace
The allure of tribalism in dangerous times
Reading Time: 5 minutes Moral codes based on tribalism—defining the in-group and the out-group, whether by culture, religion or race—offer no solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict or any of the other wars wracking our world. The only path to peace is a morality based on empathy and universal humanity, yet it seems further from our grasp than ever.
Posted inWar and Peace
An ouroboros of hate: How religion makes peace impossible
Reading Time: 5 minutes The latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East shows why religion makes peace impossible. Israel and Hamas are in a fundamentalist deadlock, neither able to triumph, but neither willing to concede.
Posted inPolitics
Lessons from Turkey: nationalist crises at home and abroad
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s been another grim week for world watchers. In the past seven days: Thirty-three Palestinians, including six children and three Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants (PIJs), were killed amid air strikes, as the Iron Dome faced off against over 970 PIJ rockets, accidentally killing an Israeli and injuring five others in the process. Sudan’s civil war […]
Posted inFree Expression
UK pupils suspended for damaging Qu’ran
Reading Time: 4 minutes Four pupils have been suspended from a school in West Yorkshire, UK, for damaging a Muslim holy book. The incident took place last week at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield in the north of England, although the Headteacher has claimed that there was “no malicious intent” concerning the students involved. A non-Muslim Year 10 (14- […]
Posted inCulture
Refugee camp blaze highlights world’s increasing precarity
Reading Time: 3 minutes Imagine losing everything again, and again, and again. In Kutupalong, a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, some 12,000 human beings didn’t have to imagine a thing this Sunday, when a fire razed 2,000 shelters in what is considered the world’s largest refugee camp. Also wiped out were 35 mosques, 21 learning centers, and an array […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Islamophobia phobia
Reading Time: 4 minutes Until a few years ago, Sweden had a national Twitter account. A random citizen would curate the @sweden username for a week before passing it on. The government shut it down in 2018 after its content started leaning to the right. Inspired by the Swedish model, an @ireland account is still going strong. The Irish […]
Posted inViolence
When is killing justified?
Reading Time: 5 minutes I watched uncomfortably as a municipal employee expertly slit the terrified little goat’s throat in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. It was 1985. The tiny, skittish beast made not a sound during the quick execution, except for the hyper-nervous skittering of its hoofs slip-sliding on the concrete floor as it was dragged into the blood-smeared killing room. […]
Posted inDeep Dive
Should Muslims kill me?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Critics of Islam love the Sword Verse. It’s Koran 9:5, or the fifth verse of the ninth Surah, At-Tawbah, “The Repentance”. The bit they like says, “Kill the pagans wherever you find them.” The charge is often applied that Muslims are being instructed by Allah to murder everyone who does not share their religion. At […]
Posted inThe Secular
Should Christmas trees be banned in tax-funded public spaces?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Although I’m a committed nontheist and ardent church-state separationist, I’m not inflexible about it. Which is to say I see no good reason to oppose Christmas trees, for example, in public, tax-supported spaces. It’s been a centuries-long American civic tradition to erect Christmas trees all over creation, so to speak—in public and private spaces—and these […]