secularism

Several days ago, before the Saudi government’s execution of prominent Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr took tensions between Riyadh and Teheran to a new high, a reader emailed me a deceptively…

A Q&A with S. Brent Plate

An excerpt from Asma Afsaruddin’s new book, “Contemporary Issues in Islam.”

What inspired you to write Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children ? It was really my daughter’s questions that got me started with this. Sheila was three years old…

Or, why we’re glad American culture settled on “Thanksgiving” over “Fasting and Humiliation.”

A few months ago, one of us (okay, Andrew), referred to the esteemed physicist and public intellectual Lawrence Krauss as “a windbag.” One of us (Michael) can attest that Andrew is among the kindest…

Imagine, for a moment, if, during the tense final hours of the recently concluded negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 world powers, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister…

Does an anti-conversion campaign threaten India’s secular ideals?

In a piece published in Le Point on January 12 th (translated and reprinted in Sightings on January 30 th) eminent philosopher-theologian Jean-Luc Marion declared, “France is at war; we can no longer…

New York Times columnist David Brooks is way behind the curve when it comes to post-theistic ethics and religion. In yesterday’s column, ” Building Better Secularists,” what he actually builds is a…