Religion Dispatches
…earch the company before buying a stock: “Is the business run well? Are customers happy and sales increasing?” Which is actually good advice, if not strikingly original or particular to the bible. But Hyman also urges the investor to look for “oversold” or “overbought” stocks and to watch for “large volume spikes and steep declines.” In other words, Hyman advises the average investor to time the market—something that you will seldom hear from a re…
Read More…powers of autonomy. A draft bylaw sent to AFP on Saturday outlaws anal sex between men and “the rubbing of body parts between women for stimulation”, and for the first time applies Islamic laws and punishments to non-Muslims. The bylaw also punishes adultery with 100 lashes of the cane. The bylaw reinforces previous sharia legislation that bans alcohol consumption, gambling, fraternising between unmarried men and women, and physical displays of af…
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…ene, as the Egyptian authorities did in 2007 when they banned The Da Vinci Code. The Coptic community—which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 80 million citizens—had raised alarm and demanded that both the book and movie be banned. Now, three years on, Zeidan’s bestselling novel is is prompting angry demands from that same community. In early May a group of Coptic lawyers demanded that the government imprison the author for five year…
Read More…omosexuality is largely taboo.” Nestled in the Caucasus, at the crossroads between East and West, Georgia has witnessed a cultural clash between liberal forces and religious conservatives over the past decade, as it embarked on radical reforms and rapid modernization. Its leaders have worked hard to westernize the country’s image but homophobia remains widespread, rights groups say. Bokvadze was an organizer of “a now-infamous rally in 2013 agains…
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…e of social and community values in pictures.” For the next 38 years, that code shaped Hollywood’s output. The Production Code insisted that movies were primarily “to be regarded as entertainment” that would “improve the race.” As such, movies should avoid explicit images that would be upsetting or play to “the lower and base element.” Those images included graphic violence, “excessive passion,” “white-slavery,” “scenes of actual child birth,” and…
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…y,” were deported: Local police chief Lazaro Mambosasa said they had been “promoting homosexuality”. “Tanzanian law forbids this act between people of the same sex, it is a violation of our country’s laws,” said Mambosasa. Just days later an NGO, the Community Health Education Services and Advocacy (CHESA) centre, was suspended on the same charge and accused of organising a workshop at the Peacock hotel. CHESA and ISLA insisted they were merely co…
Read More…rnment claims that the legislation will strengthen the NGOs’ work and help better promote the services they offer. It would do so by creating NGO monitoring offices at the district, regional, and national levels. That framework would also ensure that all rules and regulations set up by the bill are enforced…. Critics rebuke the bill as a rejection of the work that NGOs do in Uganda—to better the livelihood of its people, especially the underprivil…
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…convincing was this product launch, complete with Facebook ad campaign and promotional website including a promo video that went viral, that a number of customers were disappointed and angry to find out that it was a fake. Part of the confusion seems to have been that the launch occurred on March 28, not the customary April 1. But just as important was consumer demand. Enough people were convinced by the slick product rollout that they actually wa…
Read More…mer athletes of color who had a positive experience with BYU and the Honor Code: “If Darron Smith wasn’t so hell bent on exposing BYU, the Church and the honor code office as racists, he’d find out that for every Thomas Stancil, Tico Pringle and Ray Hudson, there’s a Brandon Davies, Reno Mahe and Brian McDonald, the latter of which recovered from an alcohol-related probation, joined the Church and served a mission to Washington, DC.” Sikahema’s fu…
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…d it as a noun, as the Greek and Latin translations did, then you take the bet as a preposition, “in,” and you get a simple declarative sentence familiar from the King James Version translation: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Full stop. What follows, “And the earth was without form, and void,” then describes the unformed, chaotic (tohu vabohu) earth that God just created from nothing. Taken this way, then, we imagine an a…
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