Australian news website, New Matilda posted an article by Jeff Sparrow noting that progressive atheists don't do much to shout down the New Atheists who preach Islamophobia ( Read more... )

Qur'an 4:34 teaches that "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. ( Read more... )

This post is directed primarily at Christians and Muslims. Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, YHWH. A fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that if you don’t follow Christianity, you will go to hell. A fundamental doctrine of Islam is that if you don’t follow Islam, you will go to hell ( Read more... )

http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/04/druze.html

A friend of mine wrote this interesting blog post. I thought I would let the community chew on it.

The Druze


( Read more... )

This is from Sam Harris' new book, The End of Faith:

(Endnote #20 to Chapter 4, The Problem with Islam)

Christopher Luxenberg (this is a pseudonym), a scholar of ancient Semitic languages, has recently argued that a mistranslation is responsible for furnishing the Muslim paradise with "virgins" (Arabic hur, transliterated as "houris"--literally ( Read more... )

This is an extension of a previous post--something that occurred to me today in a wonderful conversation with essentialsaltes.

Let us compare three ways of Godly communication in reference to three of the major world religions:

Judaism: inspiration--God is spirit. "Spirit" comes from the same word as "breath", perhaps a reference to the spoken tradition as ( Read more... )

Any ideas for an icon for this community? I can't visualize what a "conversion" would look like... maybe some kind of lightbulb-like picture?