Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/page/24/)
Posts about religion and spirituality.
Today, the legacy of Khalsa Diwan Society is a reminder that Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities have had a longstanding history of cooperation and collaboration in California, providing a model for small and marginalized faiths to share a safe, communal space.
The wholesale abandonment of organized religions by Millennials does not mean that the generation has abandoned social commitments. As many as seven in ten consider themselves social activists. Not merely socially aware—social activists. They are a generation that puts their values into action.
Well, there was this book, Mama Lola, about a Vodou priestess in Brooklyn. Did I know the author? No I did not. The subject was close to home. We had inherited responsibilities that have been overstretched by migration. It’s not something that we talk about. Maybe after your dissertation on Jamaica, you’ll write another book on your family’s story. In the meantime was there enough interest in this work to bring her to campus? Mere thoughts of that someday became inspiration enough to help me keep my eyes on the prize.
Jonathan Curiel’s new book is a readable and reliable history of the Muslim experience in America. The first waves of Muslim immigrants in the United States were very insular, Curiel writes, but interfaith efforts are one of the new hallmarks of American Islam — and a hallmark that separates American Muslims from Muslim communities in other countries.
Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a group or person worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. Read why this week they chose our own Rabbi Michael Lerner!
This is why this little festival, that’s over almost before it begins, is one we don’t really take seriously, maybe can’t take seriously. Jewish communities often make it into a child-focused festival, concentrating on the fun and the fancy costumes. It’s made into a Jewish Mardi Gras, and adults have a bit too much to drink maybe, but not so much that we, like Rabbah in the Talmud, discover the depths of our own aggression.
The media’s slow response to this tragic loss – something that would otherwise be all over the 24-hour news cycle – is a painful reminder of how racism and Islamophobia distort reporting on crimes like these.
Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; Yusor Mohammad, 21; and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 didn’t do anything to deserve death. Killing Muslims in America today isn’t a hate crime, it isn’t even a tragedy. It is just sad. And frightening.
Throughout history, Jews and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Jews have killed each other, Hindus and Muslims have killed each other, Catholics and Protestants have killed each other, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims have killed each other, many faith communities have killed Atheists and Agnostics, and on it goes. We continually kill others and are killed by others over concepts we can never prove.
While we at Tikkun do not feel it’s fair to blame Christianity or imply that all Christians somehow implicitly support the kind of Christianity that leads some American Christians to feel that their murdering of Arabs or Muslims is doing Jesus’ work, we do think that Hedges’ powerful critique of the move American Sniper should be read by those who are too willing to forgive the American media for its implicit and sometimes explicit glorification of the US military.