It’s time for another trip into tmatt’s personal GetReligion Guilt folder.
Doctrinal debates about how to take lives
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Why does Vanity Fair happen to good people?
There’s something vertigo-inducing about Bono’s editing an issue on Africa for Vanity Fair. The visual conflicts abound: Alongside Bono’s Guest Editor’s Letter about how many African children die from preventable diseases, a nude threesome promotes a Dolce & Gabbana purse; at the end of an editorial spread about 20 innovative covers shot by Annie Leibovitz, Dolce & Gabbana returns, using a piece of beefcake in a thong to promote a cologne. This is like reading an article in Playboy that condemns female genital mutilation.
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'I am Ax Ishmael,' again
Right after the massacre at Virginia Tech, I wrote an emotional post in which I wondered aloud when the “religion shoe” was going to drop in this story.
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Sir Salman, champion of free speech
In reading news articles about the decision by Great Britain to bestow knighthood on Salman Rushdie, one can’t help but wonder why in the world the British would decide to do this. I mean, all they are doing is upsetting a substantial minority of Britain’s population and inflaming Islamic sentiment around the world by honoring a man who is just a novelist. Since when should we honor people who are attacked and threatened with death for what they say or write?
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She's a dessert topping and a floor wax
Last week I looked at Bill Moyers’ puffy interview of The Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, and found it lacking.
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How big is CAIR?
Audrey Hudson’s very long story in Tuesday’s Washington Times takes the Council on American-Islamic Relations to task for its alleged falling membership. The civil liberties organization struck back in a strongly worded press release the same day that says the Times is a “right-wing” newspaper that publishes “agenda-driven reporting.”
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Fatwa wars in Egypt
Thanks to reader Jerry for pointing out this tremendous read in The New York Times about the religious pronouncements, or fatwas, being issued in Egypt that govern the daily lives of the millions who live there. Reporter Michael Slackman highlights the scandalous, sensational edicts, but he does not merely highligh fatwas about women breast-feeding grown men and drinking Muhammad’s urine.
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Gracia Burnham's hands-free Vulcan mind meld
One of the pleasures of contemporary journalism is that it brings together a writer and subject who at first seem an unlikely pair. In this case the pairing is of poet and journalist Eliza Griswold with Gracia Burnham, missionary to the Philippines and former captive of Abu Sayyaf rebels, whose husband was shot to death during a rescue that saved Gracia.
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Hollywood idealism, in brief
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