“WHAM! BAM! ISLAM!”: “Muslim superhero comics meet resistance in the U.S.”

Naif Al-Mutawa anticipated a struggle when he launched an Islam-inspired comic book series that he hoped would become a symbol of toleration.

He worried about the comics being banned in Saudi Arabia – which wound up happening, briefly – and he expected to be challenged by conservatives in Islam, since Al-Mutawa wanted to buck the trend of Islamic culture being directly tied to the Koran.

But it wasn’t an Islamic cleric that stalled the series, called “The 99,” after the 99 attributes of Allah, which the superheroes are supposed to embody.

It is the American market, and the voices of Islam’s Western critics, that have caused the most problems for “The 99,” says Al-Mutawa, who is the focus of a PBS documentary airing next week.

“Wham! Bam! Islam!”—a documentary about Al-Mutawa and “The 99”—airs on PBS on Thursday, October 13.

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CHRISTOPHOBIA WATCH: “Tim Tebow and Christophobia.”

Tim Tebow is a target of irrational hatred, not because he’s an iffy quarterback at the NFL level, or a creep personally, or an obnoxious, in-your-face, self-righteous proselytizer. He draws hatred because he is an unabashed Christian, whose calmness and decency in the face of his Christophobic detractors drives them crazy. Tim Tebow, in other words, is a prime example of why Christophobia—a neologism first coined by a world-class comparative constitutional law scholar, J.H.H. Weiler, himself an Orthodox Jew—is a serious cultural problem in these United States.

It is simply unimaginable that any prominent Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Sikh quarterback, should such a fantasy of anthropology exist, would be subjected to the vileness that is publicly dumped on Tim Tebow. Tolerance, that supreme virtue of the culture of radical relativism, does not extend to evangelical Christians, it seems. And if it does not extend to evangelicals who unapologetically proclaim their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior and who live their commitment to the dignity of human life from conception and natural death, it will not extend to Catholics who make that same profession of faith and that same moral commitment. Whatever we think of Tim Tebow’s theology of salvation, Tim Tebow and serious Catholics are both fated to be targets of the Christophobes.

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POLITICS & THE PULPIT: “To Protect Freedom, ADF Needs IRS to Punish Pastors.”

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) held its “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” this week. The annual event encourages pastors to “preach from their pulpits … about the moral qualifications of candidates seeking political office.” The event encourages pastors to stand up against tax regulations that, according to the ADF, unconstitutionally regulate pastor speech.

However, in practice, pastors are free to speak out on candidates.

The ADF event is part of its Pulpit Initiative, a larger legal strategy to change tax law—not the way the IRS implements it. This strategy, ironically, needs the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to start punishing pastors so that the ADF can sue to have the IRS stop punishing pastors.

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RELATED: “Endorsing Candidates from the Pulpit.”

I don’t think pastors should endorse candidates or giving voting guidance from the pulpit. For one thing, Christians have principled disagreements among themselves about what constitutes best policy on any given topic. So endorsing one candidate or policy over against another tends to divide the church along political and partisan lines. For another thing, most pastors aren’t competent in policy areas, so they tend to speak out of ignorance rather than knowledge. And for one more thing, don’t pastors have anything better to do? Evangelizing sinners, disciple believers, help the poor in the congregation?

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ALSO RELATED: “A Non-Partisan (and Perfectly Inconsequential) Guide to ‘Faithful Citizenship.’”

The new edition of the document is essentially a reprint of the earlier 2007 version with a new introduction by Archbishop Timothy Dolan, and the language of the document is, on the whole, rather generic. It is difficult to envision large numbers of lay Catholics setting aside time to read through its 45+ pages, which essentially repeat themes familiar to anyone who has any sort of grounding in Catholic social teaching: there are calls to respect human dignity, care for the environment, strengthen the family, and use prudence in all matters. It’s all perfectly orthodox and perfectly inoffensive. Unfortunately, it may also wind up being perfectly inconsequential.

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THE SOCIAL ANIMAL: “Can Neuroscience Tell Us Anything about Virtue?”

Of course, the orthodox interpretation of the new sciences slouches toward determinism. In this view, neuroscience, genetics, and psychology reveal us to be the unwitting pawns of biochemical processes, hardwired at birth and changed only through pharmaceutical intervention. Yet by drawing on a vast range of research, Brooks suggests that the findings of these fields, rightly understood, in fact point to the incredible reality and importance of old-fashioned things like education, character formation, and virtue. Moreover, he shows how success in many aspects of life depends crucially upon capacities of self-discipline, empathy, and insight that must be cultivated rather than merely inherited. Although biology matters, our biological endowment is remarkably plastic. We are not born as individuals strapped to a particular fate. Rather, we are truly social animals, whose remarkable potential comes to be cultivated, exercised, and enjoyed in communion with others.

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HEH: “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.” Kevin Williamson summarizes the declaration this way: “So a bunch of dirty hippies shut down the Brooklyn Bridge because Goldman Sachs is mean to chickens.” That made me laugh. What makes me cry is that the declaration lumps all corporations together into a continuous “they,” then blames the whole for the sins of the part. Also, there’s not one protest against government here. Not one. If corporations got us into the mess we’re in, they did with government help, so why not blame government too?

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 “KINGDOM”: “The Most Misused Biblical Term.”

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AL MOHLER’S AGAINST IT, OF COURSE: “Baptist Fellowship Offering Cash Incentives to Churches Considering Female Pastors.”

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PRAY FOR US, MARY: “School tells girl wearing rosary violates dress code.”

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FROM MY MAGAZINE: “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Series Archive.”