Patheos is Launching a Video Contest: Faith on Campus

Cold stones – The Immanent Frame. When I first received the invitation to contribute to “Is This All There Is,” I thought immediately of the great speculative fiction author Douglas Adams. The question called to mind the title of his novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. An open question about endings demanded an equally amorphous valediction. My goal was to write a series of seemingly unconnected vignettes, which would ultimately connect to a point and work in the number “42.” Inspired by recent resignation letters from the executive branch of the US government, which used the initial letters…

Eboo does some good work in this piece on media representations. I think it’s the next area we have to talk about: how even basic media framing perpetuates fear and ignorance about religion. The Faith Divide: Nine years after 9/11, a debate about Islam – On Faith at washingtonpost.com. There you have it in a nutshell. The forces of intolerance scream from the rooftops, “Islam is about domination”. The forces of moderation are questioned with the intent of delegitimizing them (they’re either just liars, or liars and secret radicals).

This New York Time’s commentary ties Edward Said’s classic opus, Orientalism, to the game Prince of Persia. Then it stops. Good idea. Lousy implementation. “C” at best.   We do not see the rest of the world except as a mythologized “us.” To see the world as being composed of difference, means we have to acknowledge difference at home, and perhaps internalize the challenge to our uniqueness. It is far easier to control and encourage emulation of “us,” than to deal with difference. Orientalism, Prince of Persia