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religious conflict

  • AN OCTOBER SURPRISE FROM BIN LADEN? WHAT IT SAYS

    Joseph Nye reports correctly that Bin Laden skewed the last election in favor of Bush against Kerry by six points due to a strategically released tape right before the election. It is in Bin Laden’s interest to keep a war of civilizations going, which means keeping a Neo-Conservative in the White House. This serves the Civil War he is conducting within Islam. My trouble with this is, what does this say about the American electorate? Why can people be so easily persuaded to become paranoid because one extremist releases a tape? It says that too many of us are manipulated by fear rather than reasoned thinking. We need an electorate in the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, that is up to the challenge of wielding all that global power more wisely.

    The Obama campaign should consider apportioning some of those millions of dollars in advertising right now …

  • A New Baptist Approach to Muslims?

    This article highlights the important role of Richard Land, one of the most famous conservative religious spokesmen in the country, in the development of the report on U.S.-Muslim Engagement. A responsible approach to United States foreign policy has to include a bipartisan approach. That is why our project reached out to moderate evangelicals in an effort to create a new basis of multi-faith relations at a global scale.…

  • Does the U.S. Bipartisan Group’s Report on Engaging the Islamic World Favor Obama?

    The recent U.S. report on Muslim engagement was crafted carefully by a very bipartisan group in which I played a role, but this article argues that it strongly favors Obama’s foreign policy.

    U.S.: Bipartisan Group Urges Deeper Diplomacy with Muslim World

    WASHINGTON, Sep 24 (IPS) – In an implicit indictment of President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” and the hawkish pronouncements by Republican candidate John McCain, a bipartisan group of nearly three dozen U.S. leaders called here Wednesday for Bush’s successor to place much greater emphasis on high-level diplomacy — including direct engagement with Iran and Syria — in dealing with the Middle East and the Muslim world.

    In a 152-page report, the group, which included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Bush’s former Deputy Secretary of State and McCain adviser Richard Armitage, also called for any new administration to work “intensively for immediate de-escalation of the

    …

  • What is *Reality*? – Welcome to the Sulha

    In the context of major global conflicts, where everyone is analyzing what is right or wrong, black or white, left or right, it has occured to me that the definition of reality sometimes gets lost in the mix.

    Here are few definitons of reality occording to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

    ‘Reality’

    1: the quality or state of being real

    2 a (1): a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality(2): the totality of real things and events realityb: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily

    Imagine for just a moment if headlines coming out of the Middle East read like this tomorrow….

    Today thousands of Arabs, Jews, Israelis,
    Palestinians, Seculars and Religious, Christians, Muslims,
    Druze, young and old gathered to dance, to cry, to share, to
    laugh, to work, to play and ultimately, to live together for
    three days just a few miles outside of     …

  • KOSHER RED MEAT GETS A BLACK EYE: RELIGIOUS CONFLICT’S CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS

    A huge conflict has emerged inside the American Jewish community on the status of their kosher red meat. The first criminal indictments have emerged of the country’s largest kosher meat business, which involve the hire of undocumented immigrants who are minors. Accusations of abuses of both animals and people are widespread.

    Now accusations of worker abuse are emerging at the next largest producer of kosher red meat.

    With news emerging from the some of the most prestigious research bodies regarding the role of meat eating in 1/5th of the world’s global warming emissions (more than transportation emissions!), and all of the accompanying ramifications for plant, animal, and human life on earth, it raises even deeper questions about meat eating and religious values. It forces the question on the indirect relationship between eating a simple steak and the abuse of the planet and other people. If eating kosher meat is …

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