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City of Brass

Bill Kristol’s year-long stint as columnist at the New York Times has ended. His last column, entitled “Will Obama Save Liberalism?“, begins with the line: All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era. In so doing, Kristol ties himself to conservatism’s swan song, and then…

The following anecdote is written by my friend Aamer Jamali, via email a few weeks ago (prior to the Inauguration). I have his permission to reprint it here. Of all the things to remember about my Hajj trip (and there are right now, too many to recount) an especially illustrative anecdote stands out in my…

I am frustrated, because in the past few weeks I’ve received various email forwards from many people I respect that are laden with anger and frustration at Israel’s campaign of collective punishment in Gaza. These are intelligent, tolerant people – mostly muslim, but also christian, hindu and atheist – who have never been tainted by…

I don’t begrudge Sarah Palin this at all: Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin wants to write a book and is looking to Robert Barnett, the same high-powered DC attorney who represented Barack Obama and both of the Clintons while they were getting their book deals. Palin is seeking an $11 million book advance, people.com reported. That’s…

Obama’s inauguration speech certainly set a high bar. Can his Administration live up to it? Or the expectations of Obama’s supporters? President Obama himself has been careful not to promise the moon, but rather emphasized that the job ahead is a shared responsibility and will not be an easy road. Still, there is alwas the…

I’m not a big fan of the “100 day honeymoon” period for new presidencies – if anything, the tone on day one is probably predictive of the entire term. In that regard, I don’t have a lot to complain about yet, as Obama has moved swiftly on executive orders to undo many of the most…

The Belief-o-Matic quiz here at Beliefnet is a really interesting resource that I think deserves some attention. I took the quiz, as did several others at Talk Islam (muslims and non-muslims alike), and we are discussing the results from the perspective of comparative religion. I think that the evidence supports the Abrahamic contention that Islam…

Incendiary Dutch politician Geert Wilders will be brought to trial for comparing Islam to Nazism: Geert Wilders made headlines in March 2008 for his short-film Fitna, which juxtaposed shots of the 9/11 attacks on the US with quotations from the Quran, the text Muslims believe to be divinely revealed. In 2007 he had called for…

I am a huge fan of the China Rises blog written by Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers. Johnson has a great catch about how Chinese censors reacted to the following paragraph in Obama’s speech: “Recall that earlier generations faced down communism and fascism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy…

Having just returned from my trip to Kenya, I saw firsthand how Obama’s Kenyan roots are a matter of national pride there. Obama’s face graced the papers almost every other day, and our taxi driver proudly told us he was of the Luo tribe and came from the village adjacent to Obama’s ancestral hamlet. Hearing…
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