Glenn Greenwald's concerns about credibility and value of many of the much touted busts of various "terror plots" on American soil deserve to be pondered carefully. The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who — with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents — allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at... Read more

Reading the evangelical magazine Christianity Today just now, I was deeply moved by the following report. Why Not College for the Disabled? | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction Russ Kinkade holds up a pen. If it were broken, he says, he would toss it. "So if you objectify people and see they are broken, then it makes logical sense that you would discard them," concludes Kinkade, executive vice president of Shepherds Ministries. Located south of Milwaukee, the... Read more

There’s an interesting article in The Economist on morality police in Sri Lanka who are cracking down on immodestly dressed women, unmarried couples who smooch in public, and so on. The unexpected twist is that they’re enforcing the Dharma, not Sharia. According to the article, these actions–which are arguably unconstitutional–meet widespread popular approval. Sri Lanka’s moral policing: Rajapaksa’s big cover-up | The Economist Read more

An inspiring event worthy of such a beautiful city. Mosque, synagogue to hold dual services in Savannah | savannahnow.com The city’s oldest Jewish synagogue and oldest Islamic mosque are coming together this weekend, honoring Jewish-Islamic relations. Members of the Masjid Jihad mosque will join the congregation of Mickve Israel for Shabbat Services and dinner Friday at the synagogue. Imam Maajid Ali will speak. [MORE] I’m reminded of a Quranic verse that discusses the moral imperative to uphold religious freedom: Those... Read more

Not that I fancy myself particularly well informed about the history of Islamic art, but one of my pet peeves is when Muslims universalize contemporary prudishness and/or ideological hangups concerning the arts–not to mention impose them on others, Muslim or otherwise–so I found this article in the Biblical Archaeology Review particularly interesting. It features a nude and very pregnant statue of the Virgin Mary (peace be upon her), split down the middle in the style of an anatomy textbook. The... Read more

I went back to school a few years ago and–for some inscrutable reason that I’m still trying to work out–did an M.A. in Religion, so this really had me in stitches. (Or was it tears?) It really is criminal how graduate school programs keep churning out humanities PhDs for whom it will be mathematically impossible to land an academic job. (In which case, why spend a decade getting a PhD?)   Read more

An inspiring story of an Israeli Jew reaching out to Muslims and Arabs in a most original and unlikely of ways. Israeli millionaire builds mosque in France – Israel Activism, Ynetnews An unlikely benefactor. An Ashkelon resident who made a fortune in the European real estate business has decided to pay for the construction of a mosque in France for the benefit of the local Muslim community. Father of four Robert Harush, 58, grew up in Ashkelon and having completed... Read more