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Ikea is …

Sexist. or Islamophobic. I don’t know. Apparently Ikea won’t put images of women assembling furniture in its instructions because it might offend Muslims. Really. Smart money says they never thought about it and needed a way to cover their rears. Muslims are good for things after all. I personally would not be offended. I think it would encouragement for my wife to try putting the stuff together. Right now all I hear is that “Ikea shows a man doing it, so you need to do it.” I’m actually offended they don’t show women. I’m also offended that they only show…

Quote: Religion in the American Public Sphere

What would happen if religious ideas were subjected to such a debate? I want to conclude with some speculations. A robust, critical discussion of religious ideas might encourage popular faiths more consistent with modern standards of plausibility, more conscious of the historicity of all faiths, and more resistant to the manipulation of politicians belonging to any party.  The long moratorium on sustained, public scrutiny of religious ideas has created a vacuum in which easy god-talk flourishes. Religion has no monopoly on foolishness and ignorance, but our convention of giving religious ideas a “pass” has made religion a privileged domain for wackiness…

So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews? | The Jewish Chronicle

So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews? | The Jewish Chronicle. Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christendom – through the medieval period into the modern world.