A lot of people labor under — and suffer from — severe misunderstandings of the concept of shari‘a.   In many cases, these misconcepions derive from rumors, hearsay, and truly awful media discussions of the topic.  And these, in turn, are often based upon distorted and propagandistic websites.   But not all online sources are pernicious and misleading.  This discussion, for example, is both accurate and potentially helpful:   http://www.snopes.com/2017/06/19/what-is-sharia-law/   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/yes-ancient-civilizations-on-mars-sounds-crazy-and-yet/   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    “What happens when a Mormon, a Catholic and a Seventh-day Adventist walk into an apartment complex?”     It’s pretty obvious that something violent or at least harmful to society is likely to happen when three different kinds of religionists meet.  Right?   “Religion,” insisted the late Christopher Hitchens, “poisons everything.”   Well, maybe not:   “Working across faiths, three churches shift 200 beds for homeless families”   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    “I love Maui so much.  I would rather live one day in Maui than one month in New York.” Charles Lindbergh   “It [Maui] is queer country, hard to describe because it varies so—and all the foliage changes—sometimes grass—sometimes cane—sometimes bamboo—there are many waterfalls—masses of rank trees and bushes—all new to me— . . . always the sea with usually its black rim of lava at the edge.” Georgia O’Keeffe   “Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a... Read more

    Many tourists in Hawaii zip right past this place.  If there’s time, though, it’s certainly worth a peek:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685306/Encountering-a-landmark-of-Japanese-Buddhism-in-Hawaii.html   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    It’s Friday, so another article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-lengthening-shadow-is-quality-of-thought-deteriorating-in-lds-scholarly-discourse-regarding-prophets-and-revelation-part-one/   We hope that you’ll enjoy it and that you’ll find it stimulating.  Have a great weekend!   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    An interesting interview with Noel Reynolds, available through the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/lds-perspectives-podcast-the-lectures-on-faith-with-noel-reynolds/   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    I’m very proud of Senator Jeff Flake (R), the (Latter-day Saint) junior senator from Arizona.   He never endorsed Donald Trump, for example.   He’s a principled conservative.   And he gave a very good talk not long ago to an audience (including me) at a meeting of BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies:   https://www.iclrs.org/index.php?blurbId=75031&table=Blurb   In the following link, there’s a video interview with him at the annual Congressional baseball game, back on 14... Read more

    Details of the upcoming 16 August “Chiasmus Jubilee” are beginning to be made public.  See here:   https://bookofmormoncentral.org/events/chiasmus-day-2017   I encourage anybody who will be in the area that evening to be there in the Joseph Smith Auditorium on the BYU-Provo campus.   (Be warned, though:  I’m intending to show up, too.)   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more

    The title of the article is somewhat inaccurate, since the real topic, I think, is archaeological heritage.  It’s about black market antiquities trading, looting, the wanton destructiveness of Da‘esh (“ISIS”), and related issues — which are, in my view, quite a bit more complicated than they might seem to many at first glance:   https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/who-gets-to-own-iraqs-religious-heritage/533598/   Posted from Kaanapali, Maui, Hawaii     Read more