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Why the de-faithing of Islam is a threat to all America’s religions
Some say Islam is not a religion. Here's why all faiths should contest that.

- Asma T. Uddin explores religious freedom -- or the lack thereof -- in her new book, When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom.
- She identifies and dispels myths surrounding Islam that attempt to weaken the rights of Muslims, such as the idea that Islam is a monolith, or is not a religion at all.
- It's important to understand that religious freedom primarily involves a relationship between the government and religious individuals or organizations. This differentiates it from religious pluralism or tolerance.
In the aughts, a number of Christian conservative figures, including Pat Buchanan and Austin Ruse, were aligning their political-religious worldview with Islam in an attempt to separate from liberal Democrats. Just over a decade later, the same men were branding Islam as a purely political system while claiming it's actually not a religion at all—and thereby not protected by American religious liberty laws.
Such a pivot has important consequences. If Islam is, in the eyes of the courts, deemed to not be a religion, then Muslims are longer protected by the freedom of religion clause. While such a notion seems absurd given that Islam is the planet's second largest faith, there is precedent for this argument, writes lawyer and scholar Asma T. Uddin in her new book, When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom.
Myth 1: Islam is not a religion
Uddin knows this topic well. In 2010, she represented the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which was building a new mosque roughly 30 miles outside of Nashville. Having outgrown its previous facility near Middle Tennessee State University, members raised $600,000 for a new complex. Then the vandalism began.
As Uddin explains, the center went through the bureaucratic process every house of worship has to endure. Religious centers are usually spared the more laborious aspects of this process, however. Only that's not what happened. Enter the argument that Islam is not a religion.
At this point, Uddin started to hear that, "Islam is not a religion, it is instead a dangerous political ideology and therefore Muslims don't have the same access to these religious protections, including the religious land-use laws that every other house of worship gets, because it's a threat to America. Unfortunately, the judge allowed this to go on for a number of days despite the fact that a lot of the questions are just really inflammatory, and ruled against the mosque."
At the time, Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey used his failed Gubernatorial election platform to question Islam's validity as a religion. That helped to kick off this entire movement. Eventually, the center was given final approval thanks to Uddin's team's efforts. Sadly, this did not stop the vandalism.
Vandalism at the construction site for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images.
Myth 2: Islam is a monolith
Anti-Islam sentiment has only been further stoked since then, especially when it comes to the many "Sharia bans" proposed around the nation. According to Uddin, 43 states have attempted or implemented some form of anti-Sharia legislation, even though there has been no evidence of efforts to institute it in this country. Uddin continues:
"The movement behind this uses a lot of the same language: that Sharia or Islamic religious law is actually just as a political tool to take over the U.S. The way I see it is that this is just another way to say Islam is not a religion. In terms of the policy ramifications and the legal ramifications, you see this happening in all the different states that are attempting to limit Muslim religious arbitration."
According to Uddin, this trend is not limited to building mosques. She cites a number of studies that have found that in religious liberty cases, Muslims are the least likely faith community to prevail compared to any other religious group.
Though there are thousands of Christian denominations around the world—a fact most Christians recognize—Islam is often treated as a monolith in America. Yet, as Uddin writes in her book, Muslims come from over 70 countries, as well as from indigenous sects such as the Nation of Islam. In fact, 20 percent of slaves were Muslim. Islam is very much at the heart of the American experience; it is not the faith of the "other." Rather, it is part of us.
Uddin puts it best when she writes, "Fearing all Muslims because some Muslims are doing abhorrent things also betrays an extreme ignorance of religion in general and Islam in particular."

Myth 3: Religious liberty protects religions
Defining what qualifies as a religion can even baffle scholars, as Jack Miles has written. Uddin strips it down to the basics: ultimate ideas about life, purpose, and death; metaphysical beliefs; moral or ethical systems; comprehensiveness of beliefs; important writings; ceremonies and rituals; special diets; religious garb or grooming requirements. Islam qualifies on every measure.
American religious liberty is designed to protect believers, not beliefs. As Uddin writes, in autocratic nations, those hurt most under dictatorial governments are most often Muslims. America is supposed to be better than this. The freedom to believe (or not) is an important component of democracy. This does not, however, translate as acting out on every belief your faith system espouses. Be it the Bible or Quran, the religious are selective of the dictates they follow. The role of the American government is to monitor and, if needed, punish the actions of its citizens. It is not there to punish the observance of any belief system.
Religious liberty: It's between the government and the believer
The term "American experiment" is pertinent. Collectively, we are a few centuries into creating a democratic nation open to all faiths, provided that the beliefs do not turn into actions that harm others.
As Uddin says, knowledge is of primary importance in this experiment. Her book is an important contribution to the broader religious educational legacy. That means understanding what our laws entail, which is what Uddin explains best in her book.
Religious freedom primarily involves a relationship between the government and religious individuals or organizations. In jurisprudence, the phrase that matters most is "the practice of their sincerely held religious beliefs without undue restrictions." If a burden is placed on your religious practice, there has to be compelling interest, which does not include not wanting a mosque in your neighborhood because Islam is not your religion.
"When I think of religious freedom, I think of this precise relationship between the government and the religious believer, whereas a lot of other people think of religious freedom as something more akin to religious pluralism or religious tolerance. I hope that this book educates people that it's more precise than that. And that precision is really necessary when talking about religious freedom in the current context because the politicization of religious freedom is really based on our misunderstanding of how the law works."
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How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
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Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p>Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
Triceratops illustration
Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
World's oldest work of art found in a hidden Indonesian valley
Archaeologists discover a cave painting of a wild pig that is now the world's oldest dated work of representational art.
Pig painting at Leang Tedongnge in Indonesia, made at 45,500 years ago.
- Archaeologists find a cave painting of a wild pig that is at least 45,500 years old.
- The painting is the earliest known work of representational art.
- The discovery was made in a remote valley on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a9734e306f0914bfdcbe79a1e317a7f0"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b-wAYtBxn7E?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What can Avicenna teach us about the mind-body problem?
The Persian polymath and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age teaches us about self-awareness.
The incredible physics behind quantum computing
Can computers do calculations in multiple universes? Scientists are working on it. Step into the world of quantum computing.
