Religion

Very few of the heroes and villains made famous in the wars of the past decade are women. Of the scant exceptions, two of the most fascinating are the subjects of Deborah Scroggins’s thoughtful double biography, “Wanted Women.”

One is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born thinker and neoconservative darling; the other is Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who, in 2010, was sentenced to 86 years in prison for her assault on American personnel in Afghanistan. She is known as Al Qaeda’s highest-ranking female associate.

Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas," one of the biggest-selling songs of all time, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Although the wistful tune soothed homesick soldiers in such God-awful places as Guadalcanal more than half a century ago, and no doubt it still plays in Kandahar today, Berlin most likely wrote what he called "the best song that anybody's ever written" somewhere in the sunny Southwest, probably while sitting by a swanky hotel swimming pool.

When Mitt Romney takes the stage at Tuesday night's presidential debate in Dartmouth, N.H., he will have the opportunity to answer a question that has plagued Republicans for decades: is the GOP a party defined by adherence to conservative ideals or a party in which those ideals matter less than the religion, race, or sexual orientation of the people espousing them?

For many people, the wild fluctuations of global markets over the past few weeks were simply bad luck or a sign of the looming and dreaded double-dip recession. But for a large number of Americans, apparently, they were a sign from God. A recent survey by Baylor University shows that around 20 percent of Americans see God's hand at work in the economy -- even if they also strongly support a market free of all non-divine influence. "They think the economy works because God wants it to work.

September 11 broke open a generations-long battle raging inside Islam over who has the right to speak for the faith. On one side is the Islamic religious Establishment, embodied by the scholars who gather behind closed doors to debate theology. On the other, the self-proclaimed reformers of a diversifying global community of 1.6 billion (four fifths of whom don't reside in the Middle East), determined to apply the tenets of their faith to worldly problems.

How does one prepare for Ramadan? If you had asked me a few weeks ago I would not have said through an online seminar.

There have been a few, gratifying moments during my long career as a writer when people have told me their lives were changed for the better by something I wrote. Yet every writer, particularly those dealing with controversial subjects, has to confront the possibility that his or her words will have, or will seem to have had, baleful influences as well.

What's wrong with this picture: Even as the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, we seem to be approaching conflicts more in zero-sum terms and with all-or-nothing politics.

Because digital networks and the global economy have humans more tightly bound than any time in their history, our well-being is inextricably intertwined with that of strangers from around the globe.

Woohoo! Secularism has arrived. That was one reaction to the news that Pitzer College in Claremont is launching a secular studies department.

"Well, it's about time!" wrote an eager academic in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The editor of CNN's Belief blog didn't know "whether to be surprised that it happened or surprised that it took so long."

A.C. Grayling, a British professor of philosophy, recently published a secular version of the Bible, "The Good Book: A Humanist Bible."  To create his scriptures, Grayling has rewritten thoughts from many sages of the past in archaic language that evokes the King James Bible. His humanist Bible has sections titled Genesis, Proverbs and Epistles.