A political victory can show that Islamophobia is not inevitable or invincible. It can spark the recognition that Islamophobia connects the local and the global, the metropolitan and the periphery, the racial and the colonial.

The post First We Take Manhattan appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Witnessing, then, is not about closure but interruption. It is an ethical practice oriented toward what remains unresolved in the present.

The post Witnessing Without Redemption: The Remnant and the Refusal of Closure appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Letting differences in content generate a more differentiated account of kinds of hope might bring us closer to Derrida’s desired future of radical democracy and justice.

The post Kinds and Contents of Hope appeared first on Contending Modernities.

The weaponization of religious narratives is a powerful force in shaping perceptions and stimulating political solidarities. But so is a brief humanizing encounter as a bridge to empathy.

The post “Remember What Amalek Did to You”: The Weaponization of Biblical Narratives on a Black Church Trip to Israel appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Kharg still holds histories waiting to be uncovered—spectral traces that have shaped the island through mourning and devotion, where land and sea were not merely resources but sites of sacred belonging.

The post Kharg, the Orphan Pearl: War, Extraction, and Spectral Histories appeared first on Contending Modernities.

What do human rights mean if a state can drop the equivalent of multiple atomic bombs and still claim that the resulting mass civilian deaths were unintentional?

The post Burning Human Rights Books, Part II: Genocide, Occupation, and Decolonization appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Law does not exist in legal sources, but in the interpretation and application of legal sources.

The post Burning Human Rights Books, Part I: Modern International Law, War, and Colonialism appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Catholics cannot repair their relationship with Jews at the expense of Palestinians, who have experienced Zionism as subjugation, dispossession, and discrimination.

The post No Catholic Brand of Christian Zionism, or Tolerance for Antisemitism appeared first on Contending Modernities.

Is there space in the genealogies of religious nationalism for a roadmap away from authoritarian exclusion?

The post Identities, Boundaries, and Nationalisms: A Synthetic Response to Greenberg and Bloch appeared first on Contending Modernities.

It is in allowing ourselves to contemplate the mystery of divine being, who gives itself over to us in contemplative prayer, that we are truly alive to our contingency and our belovedness.

The post The Discipline and Gift: A Theological Critique of David Newheiser’s Hope in a Secular Age appeared first on Contending Modernities.