"Jesus vs. Allah"

Kate Moos, managing producer

Here’s an interesting article by Dahlia Lithwick in Newsweek on David Hamilton. Hamilton, Obama’s first judicial nominee, came under fire for writing that “Allah” may be the best way to refer to God in “non-sectarian” prayers:

“In a post-judgment order, Hamilton also wrote that the ‘Arabic word ‘Allah” is used for ‘God’ in Arabic translations of Jewish and Christian scriptures” and that ‘Allah’ was closer to ‘the Spanish Dios, the German Gott, the French Dieu, the Swedish Gud, the Greek Theos, the Hebrew Elohim, the Italian Dio, or any other language’s terms in addressing the God who is the focus of the non-sectarian prayers’ than Jesus Christ. Hamilton, himself a Christian, also added that ‘if and when the prayer practices in the Indiana House of Representatives ever seem to be advancing Islam, an appropriate party can bring the problem to the attention of this or another court.’”

Determining “Jewishness” in the UK

Andy Dayton, associate web producer

Here’s a fascinating case of modern law meets 5000-year-old religious tradition. At the end of October, the British Supreme Court decided that — in the case of accepting applicants to a Jewish high school — observance, not ethnicity, should be used in determining admissions. From Sarah Lyall’s New York Times write-up on the ruling:

“In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was ‘benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,’ the court wrote, ‘makes it no less and no more unlawful.’”

The article refers to the Jewish principle of matrilineal descent, which we recently heard about on SOF Observed. In the post, we included StoryCorps audio of two friends — Sarah Kelman and Joanna Schochet, who says, “We’re both halfies. By the book I don’t count.”