When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
This expression has been so often repeated that it begins to have a familiar sound. It is constantly upon the lips of certain classes of professional reformers. It is reiterated with great persistency in their writings. It seems to have a kind of unctuous flavor which gives great satisfaction without involving much individual inconvenience. But
READ MOREThe beheading of journalist James Foley in August 2014 by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)1 riveted the attention of the Western world to the threat posed by radical Muslim groups. Although the majority of Muslims worldwide are surely civil, peace-loving citizens of their respective countries, such actions by ISIL raise the
READ MOREWhen terrorists attacked America on September 11, 2001, it became a day that most Americans will never forget. June 29, 2014, was that kind of day for Iraq’s small religious communities living in Mosul and the surrounding areas of the Nineveh plains. This was the day that the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which said it would
READ MOREFor those intrigued by the advance of freedom, even and perhaps especially the advance of religious liberty in the Middle East, Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East is a major contender for your nightstand. It juxtaposes sweeping historical accounts of political, social, and religious developments with insightful biographical portraits, producing
READ MOREIn his work Does God Approve of Civil Disobedience? (Sioux City, Iowa: Anchor Publications), scholar Wallace McLaughlin says confidently that “God does not approve of civil disobedience. If men who claim to speak for the churches say otherwise, then you may be sure that in their declarations you do not hear the voice of Christian
READ MOREIt is hard to find anyone unashamedly opposed to religious liberty. It is becoming even harder to find that rare person who understands the principle at play and will grant religious freedom to beliefs they find abhorrent and to peoples they find vaguely threatening. Because, truth be told, for most people religious freedom is toleration
READ MOREJudicial decisions too frequently get bogged down in precedent and rationalization and then miss the major, common sense and what should be controlling facts and reasoning. Some decisions remind me of a line from an old rock ’n’ roll song (“You talk too much, you worry me to death”). It is not always possible, but
READ MOREHaving been raised in an exceedingly secular Jewish home, I have few memories of Jewish holidays, for the simple reason that we didn’t observe them. However, somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind are stored images, probably from the early 1960s, of Chanukah celebrations. Specifically, I remember playing with a dreidel, a four-sided spinning
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