taliban

A goyish writer wrestles with the anti-imperial themes of Hanukkah and the discomfiting questions it raises for citizens of the American empire. Might an empire be a force for good? Is “force for good” an oxymoron? And finally: how does a Roman manage, in practical terms, to say no to Rome?

Could we just look in the mirror, please?

The fact is that we are already committed to war in Afghanistan; we are already in. And while many of us may want to get out, the question is how?

While the rioting over the Danish cartoons seems to be well behind us, Yale University Press recently removed the images from a new scholarly work on the topic. Do Muslim extremists need a scholarly book as pretext with two wars being fought in Muslim nations and an ongoing crisis in Gaza? The problem isn’t with these images, but with the ubiquitous Islamophobia in the United States.

An interview with a singer marked for death by the Taliban. Curiously, while the Taliban claims that music is a violation of Islamic law, they do have their own melodies and hymns.

An interview with the director of Afghan Star, a documentary that follows a tense but cathartic talent competition.

Religious values shift with every era, often limiting moral discourse to only one religious tradition; and new research shows that the secular Swedes are happier than the rest of us. Isn’t it time to try to imagine a purely secular ethics?

A gathering of senior scholars in the field agree that the US presence in South Asia invokes a colonial legacy and undermines peace.

The brand-new Acropolis Museum, designed to showcase the repatriated plunder of another century, has instead a few other things to offer—among them, views of other museum-goers from beneath, as well as a newly censored video showing Greek Christians hard at work destroying Classical art.

Progressive religion, especially in its interfaith aspects, must help in meeting the challenges of AIDS; but we need to take seriously the questions that secularists raise about the risks and problems associated with these efforts.