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We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, honest self-expression carries a heavy price. Over the last six years, as many as a hundred print publications, including forty-one daily newspapers, have been closed by Iran’s hard-line judiciary. In April 2003 the Islamic Republic became the first government to take direct action against bloggers. Many more bloggers and online journalists have been arrested or intimidated since.

In God’s Name

Muslim Scholar Ebrahim Moosa On Freedom, Fundamentalism, And The Spirit Of Islam

In the past Muslims understood that the message of Islam is contained in very specific teachings, and that other teachings in the Koran are very Arabian in character. Unfortunately, some present-day Muslims — and they are properly called “fundamentalists” — do not look at the historical context of the Koran’s teachings, and so they want to transplant those Arabian teachings exactly as they are into twenty-first-century society.

Sunbeams

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Leap Of Faith

Yossi Klein Halevi’s Quest For Reconciliation In the Holy Land

On one level mystics and pluralists from different faiths have more in common with each other than they do with fundamentalists of their own religion. Sometimes I feel like I belong to two peoples: the Jewish people and a pluralistic people drawn from all faiths.

Resurrecting The Revolutionary Heart Of Judaism

An Interview With Michael Lerner

Jews jumped from the burning buildings of Europe and landed, unintentionally, on the backs of the Palestinians. Because our pain was so great from the Holocaust, we didn’t notice the pain we caused them.

The Boy Who Kissed The Soldier

In the ruins of Jenin, an old friend of mine is digging bodies out of the rubble where Israeli bulldozers have flattened houses, burying people alive. She describes the scene to me: Blackened, maggot-ridden corpses are displayed to anguished relatives for identification.

A Month Without Rest

Travel Notes From Israel During The Intifada

My first night, I am awakened at two in the morning by either a bomb or a gunshot; I can’t tell which. Then at 4 A.M. the Jews start singing their sad song down at the Wailing Wall, followed by the bells from al-Aqsa Mosque at 4:45: the sounds of two great monotheistic religions disturbing a good night’s rest.