American Muslims - young American Muslims in particular - are starting to understand that unless they are willing to stand up for all the other oppressed communities in this country, including those discriminated against for their gender or sexuality, then no one will stand up for them.

Few Iranians these days go through the fiction of calling themselves 'Persian.' Calling yourself Persian is a way of distancing themselves from Iran.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived.

It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.

Yoga has reinforced and grounded my own spiritual beliefs.

How can you possibly reconcile the justice of God with the idea that only through Christ can you be saved? Most of the world lives and dies and never even hears of Christ. There has to be some mechanism set up for all those who have ever lived to have an opportunity to hear of Christ.

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.