What if we surprised our enemies? I mean, really surprised them. What if we surprised them with something totally unexpected? When our personal, political, and national enemies strike us, they expect us to strike back. That’s been the human script since the foundations of human culture. We mimic violence blow for blow. Only each side wants to be the side who delivers the final blow. What if we surprised our ...

Every once in a while I go through some serious soul searching about my commitment to freedom of speech. It happens when hateful or destructive speech is protected – like pornography for example. I think pornography is toxic and should be banned along with all other environmental pollutants. Hate speech is another one. A few years ago a member of a hate group from my North Chicago suburb went on a shooting ...

Violence is a paradox. It makes sense. And it doesn’t make sense. Whether or not it makes sense or is senseless usually depends entirely upon which side you are on. J. Christopher Stevens, the United States ambassador to Libya, and three members of his staff were tragically killed yesterday as a furious mob attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The mob became violent in reaction to a short movie rec ...

Our project must be nothing less than to expose the monster that lurks within all our religions, ideologies, parties, and philosophies, and to drive the monster out of hiding and into light. -Sid (aka Siddhartha Guatama … aka the Buddha) in The Girl with the Dove Tattoo Brian McLaren's latest fictional ebook, The Girl with the Dove Tattoo, is a powerful account of human nature and the nature of God. This sh ...

My wife and I sat on the couch as we watched the first episode of TLC’s reality show All-American Muslim.  We were both excited to see how the show would portray life for Muslims living in Dearborn, Michigan.  But my wife was really excited.  Earlier in the day she saw a commercial for the first episode.  She laughed as she explained the commercial to me: Suehaila Amen, a woman on the show, was flying to Wa ...

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I’ve had a lump in my throat since I heard about the terrorist attack in Norway. Youth, for God’s sake. Talk about literally killing hope. For Americans dealing with the aftermath of our own terrorism, the implications are chilling, for this was not an Islamic terrorist. This was a Norwegian killing his own in order to promote his political agenda and he took inspiration from American right wing ideologues ...

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Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people. The world is s ...