On the Square Today

Wesley J. Smith on whether Muslim doctors should be able to refuse to treat the opposite sex :

With the Muslim population increasing in Western Europe and the United States, that faith’s strict religious requirement to maintain modesty between the sexes has prompted some Muslim medical professionals to ask whether female doctors can refuse to examine or treat any male patients at all—and vice-versa. These objections have been relatively few in number (thus far), but they raise a far stronger and more sweeping demand than the many ethical objections arising from Judeo-Christian morality, objections which often center on the refusal to prescribe a certain drug or administer a specific treatment.

Keith Donohue’s most recent novel is a chain of interlinking stories in the tradition of  The Canterbury Tales ,  The Decameron , or, closer to our time, Salman Rushdie’s  Haroun and the Sea of Stories , with a dash of Flann O’Brien, Groucho Marx, and  Tristram Shandy . It’s very funny, raucous, erotic, tender, tragic, and—gasp—entertaining.