Here’s one instruction to Muhammad from the Qur’an (16:82), followed by my translation:   فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا فَإِنَّمَا عَلَيْكَ الْبَلَاغُ الْمُبِينُ   “And if they turn away, your responsibility is only to have clearly conveyed the message.”     Read more

    This item will provoke some discussion, I expect:   http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/why-are-people-leaving-the-mormon-church/   Here are four quick reactions of my own:   1)   I’m not eager to toss people from the Church for regarding the Book of Mormon as ahistorical.  I don’t seek to drive them out.  But I also strongly disagree with that view of the Book of Mormon, and, because I believe it to be false (and somewhat incoherent), I don’t believe that the Church should ever welcome it as... Read more

      Available at no charge on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a roughly thirty-minute presentation by Professor Steven Peck that may well draw some spirited response:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/steven-l-peck-on-why-evolution-and-lds-thought-are-fully-compatible-overcoming-our-suspicions-of-science/     Read more

    “A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”  Confucius     Read more

    Good news for those of you who’ve been losing sleep over this crisis.  The impasse has been resolved.  A compromise solution has been found:   http://www.11alive.com/news/local/sandy-springs/mormon-temple-mercedes-benz-come-to-agreement-for-road-name-change/416445343     Read more

    A fascinating half-hour that’s available to you at no charge on the Interpreter Foundation website:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/jani-radebaugh-on-the-outer-solar-system-a-window-to-the-creative-breadth-of-divinity/     Read more

    My weekly Deseret News column has shown up yet again:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865675181/Can-the-scriptural-God-be-called-unchanging.html     Read more

    This is a potentially significant find from a period that, because it’s substantially pre-biblical, is typically rather neglected both by archaeologists and the general public:   http://www.livescience.com/58166-rock-art-discovered-in-israel-dark-ages-tomb.html   It seems, though, that the society of the time and the area was a bit more sophisticated and organized than may once have been thought.     Read more

    An article in the Huffington Post by my friend Dr. Bahman Baktiari:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58bf617de4b0a797c1d396bc   I appreciate his calling it to my attention.   And I feel like appending to it a small fact that was just passed on to me by Helen Leon, a close friend who lives in Orlando, Florida:   You probably recall the 12 June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting in which the 29-year-old  security guard Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more.  He was,... Read more

      http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/islam-religion-trump-gorka-214883   I posted a related comment of my own just a few days ago:   “Geert Wilders: Islam Is Not a Religion, It’s a Totalitarian Ideology”   And here’s an interesting and relevant little item from Puget Sound, in Washington State:   “Interesting that xenophobic letter did not call out Catholics, Mormons”     Read more