Word: confrontational
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...would be better if Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders would seek open dialogue with Muslim clerics rather than confront them with inflammatory debate [Nov. 27]. Christianity and Islam have glorious yet violent pasts; both have lost their way with stubborn claims to exclusive truth and the consequent rise of intolerant fundamentalism. Leaders of neither religion can claim the moral high ground, given their failure to shelter the innocent during the great wars and genocides of the 20th century. In the 21st century, both religions have the moral obligation to face the future together...
...enlightenment and free communication, do we really want to wipe out the work of the satirists who shove and cajole, who take language and thought by the throat and force us to confront with wit and guile what most refuse to face? We need this word. Relax. Take a deep breath. It's gonna be cool. Two syllables. Six letters. It's not the word, only the fear that needs to be put aside...
This is not to say that Seinfeld was racist. It satirized cultural tensions and p.c. conventions, usually hilariously, often uncomfortably, sometimes insensitively-- but it did confront them, unlike most sitcoms. It is too facile, however, to simply separate the work from the artist. The work is the artist; to the extent that we respond to it, it is us too. Liking a Mel Gibson movie (or a T.S. Eliot poem) does not make you an anti-Semite. But it does require that you ask just what you do and don't identify with in it. Apocalypto shows a rage against...
...about how insurgents are recruited, initiated and dispatched to commit mayhem and murder. And he talks about his father, a government official and?claim the men who gunned him down?a military informer. He says he knows the names of the killers (they're his neighbors) but dares not confront them. "If I did," he says, "they'd kill...
...common. Both these reknowned theologians are concerned about deepening secularism in the West and encroaching fundamentalist challenge from Islam. Williams delivered a lecture Thursday evening at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences which raised the issue of religious freedom for minorities in Muslim countries. Many wonder if Benedict will confront the same topic in his much anticipated trip to Turkey next week...