“Under what conditions does freedom of speech become freedom to hate?” Judith Butler recently asked. Here I will explore these…
Fighting words that are not fought
race
Race, orthodoxy, and “real” Islam
More than anything, the Good (Orthodox) Muslim-Bad (Black) Muslim paradigm reveals the media’s seemingly willful ignorance of the longstanding diversity…
Farrakhan, Qaddafi, and the definition of American Islam
In another example of how mass media shape and constrain what constitutes legitimate Islam and religion more generally, the New…
OMG: Oprah Winfrey, pop religion, and the temple of our familiar
I have been—and perhaps in some ways will always be—one of the denizens, the followers, the 100% skeptical and yet…
Oprah, the Rorschach test
Focusing on Oprah as an icon/inkblot, we can use our reactions to her as a Rorschach test: What do we…
Race and Christian identity
Religion News Service reports that a new book about Christian identity is inadvertently tapping into the U.S.'s racial history.
Secularism and race
The Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London is hosting a one-day conference today…
Black crescent, white cross
By now, everyone has seen the Newsweek poll indicating that a majority of Republicans believes President Barack Obama sympathizes with…
Religion, race, and the Neanderthal genome
Since the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” during the 1920’s---which involved the state of Tennessee’s effort to punish John Scopes for…
Secularism . . . a really interesting problematic: A conversation with Joan Wallach Scott
At a March 2010 conference, “Gendering the Divide: Conflicts at the Border of Religion and the Secular” (sponsored by Arizona…