I know we’re not doing the Friday Afternoon Tea any more, because it’s not really part of the “new” MoF. But I’m logging this under spirituality, so there (don’t expect one next week) Regular readers should have discovered by now that I am, among many many other things, a dualist. I have a yin-yang tattooed [...]

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Today’s Washington Post has the following article: Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him. Email messages insinuate that Barack Obama could be a Muslim plant, trained by a grand conspiracy when he lived as a grade school boy in Indonesia. I’m not sure how newsworthy the fact that people are using the [...]

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Two links: On Feministing, a moderate flamewar between two bloggers caused the following: Dawn took down this picture of me from her post after a commenter complained that I was “immodestly dressed.” Shoulders, apparently, are the new cooter. My response was that I, too, had been told off for baring my cooter shoulders. Frequent readers [...]

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Before I begin this post about the Golden Compass, a refreshingly original fantasy by Philip Pullman and a movie that will be released on December 7th, I have to mention that our very own xJane, with her exclusive Hollywood connections, has already seen and pre/reviewed the movie! Listen to tone of Bill Donahue (sort of [...]

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Even though I am a unabashed atheist, many of my heroes–my virtual mentors, if you will–are believers. In many ways, Krista Tippett’s (who calls herself “a person of faith”) Public Radio program Speaking of Faith sets the bar for the new Mind on Fire. Every time I listen to her interviews, she challenges my preconceptions [...]

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I’d like to see a similar compilation of the Koran, but in the meantime, I shall leave you with this thought: instead of prayers in schools, we should have bears in schools. And let you find out for yourselves exactly which verse that describes. hattip

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I was thinking of this recently, as I prepared for judo. DH & I have stopped going to tai chi and I really miss it, not because I enjoyed it per se but because it felt like it was filling some kind of a void. I no longer go to church on Sundays (and never [...]

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A Pakistani-American Muslim businessman ran into Mitt Romney on the campaign trail and asked the following: I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He [...]

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I’m not a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, but this made some sense to me: Clinton later said Democrats should speak about religion more openly to frame policy debates. “The Bible should be used to win debates over poverty the way Republicans tried to use it on gay marriage,” she said. “No one can read [...]

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Here’s an interesting article from Pakistan’s Daily Times that explores the different experiences that Muslims have in the U.S. and Europe: A recent Pew Forum study found Europe’s Muslims to be “markedly less well off than the general population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolated,” while most American Muslims say that “their communities are [...]

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