The recent release of films “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” and the success of Showtime’s “Homeland,” underscore the unresolved and bitter conflict between Washington and the wider Muslim world.  The question rages, Why are many Muslim majority populations opposed to the United States Government?  As George W. Bush asked after the September 11, 2001 attacks, […]

As I prepare my classes for Spring 2012 I am interested in a group of critics called the “new atheists” who argue that religion is a toxic social force and corrosive of public discourse, in a phrase, that religion kills.  Their argument is that theological hate-speech is a cancer in the body politic of Western […]