Related Posts

When did the Wahabbi movement become Muslim? [corrected]

Correction: After several months, I finally realized this article has a persistent typo. The correct transliteration is “Wahhabi” not “Wahabbi.” Therefore the title should properly be When did the Wahhabi Movement become Muslim? Arabic does not favor a double consonant at the end, and I should have known better. Rather than correct the entire piece, I’m simply putting the caveat up front. Sorry for the confusion. This is a serious question: When did the Wahabbi movement become Muslim? Just finished re-reading Hamid Algar’s excellent essay, Wahabbism: A Critical Essay, and the one question that he never answers is when did…

The world was created by magic

I was intrigued by this article in CNN on the Kansas Board of Education. It seems that the faulty logic that ID people are trying to put forward actually puts them at a disadvantage in terms of curriculum design. If their wording goes through, it should be fine to suggest that a grand wizard (not the KKK kind, but the Gandalf kind) brought the world into existence. We are, in fact, nothing more than a magic school exercise. Or, how about that life on Earth is not unique, but we were seeded here by aliens to see how we would…

Unfriendly Fire: Gays and National Security

The NYT has the first chapter of the book Unfriendly Fire. The chapter is about how gay Arabic specialists were dismissed from the military for violating the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. National Security or Religious Right? We know who won that fight.