Blog
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The case seems simple at first. Dominique Hakim Marcelle Ray was convicted in 1995 of the rape and murder of a 15-year old girl and sentenced to death. Ray subsequently converted to Islam in 2006 while incarcerated. The death sentence was to be carried out Feb.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Pope Urban II set the tone for a millennium-long identification of Muslims as direct enemies of Western values, culture and morals. Western culture was good, pure, logical, virtuous, orderly. Islam was bad, polluted, senseless and violent.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
While I certainly didn’t have anything against the Catholics, I really didn’t know much about the religion.
MEDIA & ETHICS
What if all people of goodwill, whether Muslim, Christian, Mormon, Scientologist or whatever, upon hearing any antifaith propaganda being passed on, got mad as hell and spoke up about it?
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
I know whereof I speak because I was an investigative reporter in the 1980s. I wandered into one of these camps in Randfontein, outside Johannesburg.
TOLERANCE
I spent three days living as though in the future—where we can live our own faith, and respectfully allow others the same right, where students and mothers and artists of many cultures all share the same visions.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Fake News has become a staggering problem. Public trust in media institutions has declined sharply in the wake of numerous scandals fueled by fabricated stories in the news and on social media.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Like setting your neighbor’s apartment on fire, it worked; but as historian Dan Carlin points out in his Blueprint for Armageddon VI, burning your neighbor’s apartment can set yours on fire too.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
In 2017, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans to find out what it is that makes their lives meaningful. Not surprisingly, spending time with family was the first thing those surveyed said brought meaning to their lives. The second? Religion.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It is not “normal” for people to hate each other because they look different, come from a different place or have different ideas about the ultimate nature of God and the universe.
