https://politicalresearch.org/ The latest research related to iraq en https://religiondispatches.org/2018/01/08/reports-death-isis-have-been-greatly-exaggerated When the Iraqi government announced the end of ISIS control over its territory on December 9, 2017, there were a few celebrations in Baghdad. December 10 was proclaimed a public holiday, and a military parade marched down the main streets… Mon, 08 Jan 2018 02:32:38 EST Mark Juergensmeyer 082acd32-1088-483f-9e79-f40b72a5ed35 https://religiondispatches.org/2017/07/17/malta-adopts-marriage-equality-over-objections-catholics-and-evangelicals-and-more The parliament of Malta, an officially Catholic country, approved marriage equality legislation with a single dissenting vote. The lone dissenter bucked his Nationalist Party’s leadership, reports AP: Nationalist lawmaker Edwin Vassallo cited his Catholic faith and its incompatibility with what… Mon, 17 Jul 2017 12:14:23 EDT Peter Montgomery 2c0b4709-37fe-4546-8d26-4841a7dd5318 https://religiondispatches.org/2017/07/05/orthodox-tv-channel-offers-gays-one-way-ticket-out-russia-and-more-global-lgbt-recap Madrid hosted the massive WorldPride and an affiliated human rights conference this week. Among those who attended were Iceland’s former Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the first openly LGBT head of government, and former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero… Wed, 05 Jul 2017 11:55:16 EDT Peter Montgomery aa3dcdf8-ec16-4eac-939f-9af0a1f4de8f https://religiondispatches.org/2017/01/08/anti-gay-anti-catholic-evangelical-sworn-mayor-rio-more-global-lgbt-recap Durga Sengupta at CatchNews.com reported on progress and backlash on LGBT issues in India and around the world in 2016. The Family Research Council praised the Trump transition team for demanding information from the State Department on programs and staff… Sun, 08 Jan 2017 11:08:20 EST Peter Montgomery 9d33c449-d750-47d6-9510-43dc31ec29a3 https://religiondispatches.org/2016/10/02/two-former-nuns-get-civil-union-italy-kenyan-govt-partners-world-congress-families The President of the Human Rights Council announced this week that he had chosen Vitit Muntarbhorn to fill the newly created position of Independent Expert to investigate violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Muntarbhorn… Sun, 02 Oct 2016 05:56:14 EDT Peter Montgomery 7b10cd59-c097-4700-b355-40a688e1e570 https://religiondispatches.org/2016/08/26/indonesia-hears-islamist-arguments-lgbt-criminalization-zambian-churches-oppose-condom Wikileaks came under fire for releasing documents that included personally sensitive information, including the name of a man arrested for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is still a capital offense. In the International Journal of Human Rights, Po-Han Lee… Fri, 26 Aug 2016 08:04:26 EDT Peter Montgomery 346f14f6-e2b8-4782-9eda-72760a96ceac https://religiondispatches.org/2016/08/19/lgbt-victories-olympics-struggles-brazil-catholic-bishops-organizing-anti-marriage Rio Olympics: Great games for LGBT athletes, tough times for LGBT Brazilians Outsports.com tracked the success of LGBT athletes at the Olympics in Rio, as well as more than a dozen who narrowly missed making the medal podium. Italian Rachele… Fri, 19 Aug 2016 08:00:19 EDT Peter Montgomery 5d85a973-1f48-4eb4-934e-5381a22ce32a https://religiondispatches.org/2016/08/07/pope-denounces-gender-colonization-indonesian-court-considers-islamist-request There are reportedly a record number of openly lesbian, gay, and bisexual athletes competing in this year’s Olympics, which the Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers wrote are getting under way “against the backdrop of rampant anti-LGBT violence.” According to news reports… Sun, 07 Aug 2016 12:46:43 EDT Peter Montgomery 97d7a2a5-612e-4aae-93a5-bc95a73411b5 https://religiondispatches.org/2016/07/17/united-methodists-elect-1st-gay-bishop-canadian-anglicans-ok-same-sex-marriage This week’s Global LGBT Recap. Sun, 17 Jul 2016 10:42:21 EDT Peter Montgomery 1313555e-94f7-4e02-9d70-7fdd4aec2a1d https://religiondispatches.org/2016/06/19/condemnation-condolences-wake-orlando-massacre-and-more In this week’s Global LGBT Recap. Sun, 19 Jun 2016 02:38:39 EDT Peter Montgomery 1c882f4b-c09c-4b13-b64e-f6bddf61633e https://religiondispatches.org/2016/06/05/mormons-fight-marriage-equality-mexico-catholic-church-italys-anti-gay-nra-nigerian Scott Lively, an American who has promoted anti-gay policies around the world, recently argued that, if elected, President Donald Trump should apologize to the world for “Obama’s attempt to force the fascist LGBT agenda on everyone” and should follow Russian… Sun, 05 Jun 2016 01:28:28 EDT Peter Montgomery 2723cccc-6cce-473a-a869-9b78eb7b1de2 https://religiondispatches.org/2015/12/04/dont-overlook-endless-war-rise-isis Capital in the Twenty-First Century made Thomas Piketty that rarest kind of celebrity: the academic kind. The French economist’s hefty tome helped propel the issue of income inequality to the forefront of our political debates. It should come as no… Fri, 04 Dec 2015 02:27:39 EST Haroon Moghul 605c5acf-8044-4e91-88a0-b4ff6fa2bcf2 https://religiondispatches.org/2015/11/22/unesco-religion-culture-and-sogi-asia-orthodox-family-sues-stop-cremation-israeli-trans Asia: UNESCO on religion, culture and anti-LGBT bullying and violence UNESCO released a report on school bullying, violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the Asia-Pacific region. From the report’s section on religious and cultural context… Sun, 22 Nov 2015 10:09:52 EST Peter Montgomery bd5ca6d2-3275-491f-8285-72af8e155dca https://religiondispatches.org/2015/11/16/tweeting-isis-attacks-lesson-not-learning-lesson After Friday’s horrific attacks on Paris, France, leaving 129 dead, hundreds wounded, a nation traumatized, and a world shocked, we are of course asking: What do we do now? But, of course, we’ve been here before. We overthrew the Taliban… Mon, 16 Nov 2015 05:05:07 EST Haroon Moghul c9fb7e15-e20b-4747-bf81-3d6411b1106b https://religiondispatches.org/2015/11/15/why-isis-war-would-make-paris-attacks-success Update: According to CNN, “the French air force carried out bombing missions on ISIS targets in Raqqa, Syria, for a second day in a row. France is retaliating against Islamist extremist terror attacks that killed at least 129 people in… Sun, 15 Nov 2015 11:56:58 EST Mark Juergensmeyer 977d2d11-180c-4f9a-a451-b25043e9ae0c https://religiondispatches.org/2015/09/04/what-kind-islam-talking-refugees-isis “They believe in some strange religion, not Islam,” a Muslim refugee from the Iraq city of Ramadi told me when I talked with him recently in a camp near the Kurdistan capital of Erbil in Northern Iraq. ISIS territory was… Fri, 04 Sep 2015 02:33:19 EDT Mark Juergensmeyer 98da3f1e-35d9-48bb-a309-233662bd1d68 https://religiondispatches.org/2015/08/20/istanbul-haven-sorts-lgbt-syrians-and-iraqis-cayman-islands-affirm-marriage-ban-holy Richard Blanco, the openly gay Cuban-American poet who read at Barack Obama’s second inauguration, composed and read a poem for the ceremony reopening the U.S. embassy in Havana. Guatemalan photographer Eny Roland Hernandez’s large-scale portraits of LGBT people taken in… Thu, 20 Aug 2015 07:52:40 EDT Peter Montgomery 32803bef-5196-4844-af17-a9894827af3b https://religiondispatches.org/2014/11/21/anti-gay-violence-rages-gambia-conservative-complementarity-confab-coming-out-iraq-can Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed around the world on Thursday to memorialize victims of violence against transgender people. Organizers report that at least 226 trans people were murdered in the past year, which almost certainly under-reports the actual figure… Fri, 21 Nov 2014 02:37:01 EST Peter Montgomery 54b8e3d2-b1c7-4d0c-b1e7-57a3694fbef9 https://religiondispatches.org/2014/09/09/must-james-foley-and-steven-sotloff-be-martyrs-not-have-died-vain The recent arrival of ISIS in the international spotlight has demonstrated once again that there is no easy way to talk about religious extremism and the martyrs, real or imagined, that it produces. There’s the understandable urge to breathe righteousness… Tue, 09 Sep 2014 04:55:55 EDT Alana Massey 225147af-4999-4ab4-ad6a-cc465d5b0f43 https://religiondispatches.org/2014/09/04/black-and-white-and-blood-red-roots-isis The latest gruesome video released by ISIS showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff, just thirteen days after the execution of James Foley, is a stark reminder – if such reminders are necessary – of the blood-thirsty brutality of… Thu, 04 Sep 2014 11:15:47 EDT Hasan Azad 6f0a222c-e283-4485-8abd-b3accf6cefc6 https://religiondispatches.org/2014/08/21/james-foley-prayed-he-was-not-martyr One of many of the unbecoming habits of career non-believers is the mockery of prayer. From citing research studies about the inefficacy of prayer to accusing those who pray of narcissism to believe that a god of any significance would… Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:56:39 EDT Alana Massey 61fc1974-73bf-4b26-8dae-529ea76a2d5c https://religiondispatches.org/2014/08/12/its-theology-not-baseball-misunderstanding-iraqs-sectarian-conflicts Nothing is as conducive to global radical mobilization as an exclusive theological summons. Tue, 12 Aug 2014 12:37:13 EDT Amyn B. Sajoo 2c975bbd-f8bf-4fb3-8437-7b2bf61cee5d https://religiondispatches.org/2013/03/25/10-years-later-american-muslim-looks-back-iraq Ten years on, as the experts who pushed for a disastrous war remain experts, it remains unclear why it ever happened. Was it just racism? Who, after all, does not plan for the day after a war? I plan out what I am going to do when I drive up to New York to see friends and family. Maybe the rest of the world decided to move on while we floundered about, amazed that just because we dreamed something, it could not come to pass. Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:44:17 EDT Haroon Moghul 3d392b26-ded2-4d22-b55e-2a1cbacfc343 https://religiondispatches.org/2012/04/17/why-911-changed-everything-nothing The cliché that 9/11 “changed everything” is nowhere less true than in the post-9/11 impulse to declare war immediately. War was a choice as well as an echo: a choice Americans made, and an echo of how Americans have made decisions in times of previous conflict. Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:12:41 EDT Paul Harvey 3ead096b-3215-4a5b-be3c-92ef35f96ebb https://religiondispatches.org/2012/02/15/daily-beast-niall-ferguson-says-bomb-iran Ferguson always manages to discover himself at the head of the next great cause; how convenient for him, and for whole countries. Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:15:38 EST Haroon Moghul ffea5ab3-a08e-4f64-804e-cf765f448a09