Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
KABUL — In life, Farkhunda would have been an unlikely role model for empowering Afghanistan’s women. Every day, she wore the head-to-toe black garment favored by conservative Muslim women. She studied at an Islamic religious school. She believed, her father said, that women should be educated in order to raise their children in a good…
Religious leaders, who are all, “I don’t want the Affordable Care Act and its free birth control pills to ruin my church-going ladies”: you’re in for a rude awakening. Because (some of) those ladies are like, fuck yes, give me the free pills. Via The Atlantic: But what about religiously-affiliated women? Where were their voices…
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge…
A new study reports that white Christians, long understood to be the primary shapers of American politics and culture, are rapidly losing their majority status across the country — even in traditionally conservative states. Earlier this week, Jonathan Merritt of the Religion News Service dug into data from the American Values Atlas, a website unveiled late…
Chapel Hill shooting ignites anger and sadness under #MuslimLivesMatter.
Since 17 people were murdered in the Paris terror attacks that started with a massacre of cartoonists, staff, and police at Charlie Hebdo magazine almost two weeks ago, The New York Times has not deemed fit to print even one caricature by the French satirical weekly, citing Muslim sensitivities. But today the Times opened up her august…
Dear friends, a horrid assault was perpetrated against the French weekly Charlie Hebdo, who had published caricatures of Mohamed, by men who screamed that they had “avenged the prophet”. A wave of compassion followed but apparently died shortly afterward and all sorts of criticism started pouring down the web against Charlie Hebdo, who was described…
Many of the arrests are believed to stem from comments made on Facebook, Twitter and social media as the world reacted to the atrocities. They are part of a broader French crackdown on perceived hate speech, extremism and anti-Semitism amid a government push for tougher anti-terrorism measures. Anti-semitic French comedian Dieudonné was among those detained…
Forty-eight hours after hosting a massive march under the banner of free expression, France opened a criminal investigation of a controversial French comedian for a Facebook post he wrote about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and then this morning, arrested him for that post on charges of “defending terrorism.” The comedian, Dieudonné (above), previously sought elective office in…
There’s a certain ritual that each and every one of the world’s billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslimperpetrator. It’s a ritual that is we went through with the Sydney hostage crisis in December, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh…