Album review: One True Vine – Mavis Staples

ONE TRUE VINE Mavis Staples (Warner) The second collaboration between soul great Mavis Staples and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, like the first, owes as much to Tweedy’s deft guidance and production skills as it does to Staples’ power-punch vocals. He manages to plug into the emotional centre of a singer bought up on gospel, who became a powerful voice for the US civil rights movement.

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The Unending Feud: Shi’ites vs. Sunnis

There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” That confession of faith, the shahada, is professed by all Muslims, be they the 700 million Sunnis who dominate the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia or the 90 million Shi’ites who rule Iran and form majorities in Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq. To the shahada, however, the Shi’ites add, “And Ali is the Friend of God.” Those additional words in praise of Ali, whom the Shi’ites passionately claim is Muhammad’s true successor, epitomize the complex and often bloody feud between Islam’s two branches.

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Mark Sanford Sex Scandal: South Carolina and GOP Assess the Damage

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has never shied away from talking about his religious faith. So perhaps it should have come as no surprise that he invoked “God’s law” throughout his long, rambling press conference on June 24 — after going missing in Buenos Aires for six days — to confess his yearlong extramarital affair with an Argentine woman

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