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Category Archive: Religions

Jihad - December 30, 2006
Despite the evidence of the past half-decade (longer, actually), many Muslims still insist on portraying Islam as fundamentally peaceful, tolerant of non-Muslims, and claim the holy-war interpretation of jihad as an aberration of a few fanatics. Perhaps not surprisingly, these...

Idolatry and Comparative Religion - September 29, 2005
In its origins, the study of comparative religion in the West arose within a Christian context. Many of the early writers in this field emphasized the imperfections of other world religions, and attempted to show how those imperfections were realized...

Islam: Mirror of Christendom, Part III - December 02, 2004
One premise of the above analysis is that Islam, which conquered some of the most vibrant areas of early Christianity, was and is a judgment of God, and therefore that Christians must recognize that Islam�s rise and continuing success results...

Islam: Mirror of Christendom, Part II - December 02, 2004
In this section, I explore two biblical perspectives that throw light on the rise and persistence of Islam. First, Scripture indicates that the Lord judged Israel by raising up parodic versions of Israel to plague Israel. When Yahweh wanted to...

Islam: Mirror of Christendom, Part I - December 02, 2004
I wrote the following a few years ago, and have not been able to farm it out anywhere. Other parts to follow in subsequent posts to this site. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a...

Tantra - June 15, 2004
Today, Wendy Doniger writes in the May 21 TLS, "Tantra has become an Orientalist wet dream, a transgressive, weird, sexy, dangerous world. Many people refer to the Kamasutra, or even The Joy of Sex, as Tantric." It was not always...

What Kind of Religion Is Islam? - May 03, 2004
French historian Alain Besancon raises this question in a fine article in Commentary. He suggests that religions can be classified as either revealed or natural, and asks whether Christians and Jews can regard Islam as either of these. Christians and...

The Evangelicalization of Hinduism - April 16, 2004
C.A. Bayly discusses the development of "imperial religions" and their globalization in his book on the Birth of the Modern World. He points out that the major world religions other than Christianity were transformed by their encounter with Christianity, and...

Religion in Europe - October 31, 2003
In Italy, there is a raging debate over a judge's ruling that crucifixes need to be removed from schools. Seems that Europe, where religion (or religions) is still often a part of government education and where state churches still exist,...

Baal is Antichrist - October 13, 2003
Baal is AntiChrist. Like Nabu, who usurps the place of his father Marduk in Babylonian mythology; like Thoth in Egyptian mythology, who substitutes and replaces Ra; like Zeus, who rebels against his father Chronos and takes his place as chief...

More on Two Faces of Islam - October 04, 2003
Well, there's a problem with speaking well of a book before reading far enough in it. I'm still learning a lot from Stephen Schwartz's Two Faces of Islam, but fairly early in the book he makes it clear that he's...

Schwartz on Islam - October 03, 2003
I have been reading Stephen Schwartz's wonderful pieces on Islam in the Weekly Standard for several years. Schwartz has done as much as any journalist to highlight the responsibility and role of Saudi Arabia for the rise of radical Islam,...

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