Religion Dispatches
…and participated in terrorism, from participating in the Knesset. Will Egypt Spark a New Palestinian Uprising? Netanyahu is also concerned about what it would mean for him should Egypt’s nonviolent popular movement succeed. For example, what would happen if the nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt sparked massive nonviolent acts of civil disobedience on the part of the Palestinians (and their Israeli supporters) in the West Bank? This c…
Read More…of Mark Driscoll, which somehow increase the popularity of Mark Driscoll’s new book. Mark Driscoll has a new book coming out, and with suspiciously good timing, he’s managed to initiate back to back controversies. First, he showed up at John MacArthur’s “Strange Fire” conference uninvited and started a Twitter beef, which I wrote about last week. Then he posted an article alleging that pacifist Christians made Jesus out to be a “pansy” and that s…
Read More
…kowtow to the board and rewrite their social studies textbooks to meet the new standards, what kids could someday learn about health-care reform might sound like watching an hour of Fox News. Kids might be instructed to learn to compare and contrast the landmark legislation to the Black Plague, the 9/11 attacks, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bloody Sunday, or even the Jonestown massacre, as commentator Pat Caddell told Sean Hannity. (Real classy.) R…
Read More
…end time with our families.” Trump-as-the-chosen-hand-of-God is relatively new theology, to be sure, though no doubt the theology leading Trump to tout Lindell as a Senate candidate in Minnesota. (Lindell wouldn’t be the first Quistian candidate from the Land of 10,000 Lakes.) But Lindell’s remarks point to another extensive thread in American religious history: the belief, contrary to every bit of scriptural evidence, that the Christian God only…
Read More
…more organized and powerful clergy than Sunnis, and Iran’s clergy, unlike Egypt’s, were much more independent of the state. In Egypt today, among the main trends in Islamic practice are a quietist Salafism, which seeks a rigorous but non-political personal morality, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And while the Brotherhood is an incredibly large and powerful organization, it is today a product of years of suppression, torture, and intimidation. While…
Read More…and does not explicitly mention homosexuality. But section 361 of a draft new code states the punishment for anyone who has sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex is 15 to 20 years in jail and a fine of 50,000-500,000 Central African francs (£60-£600), according to a document seen by Agence France-Presse. The cabinet claims that the measure is intended to “protect the family and to comply with Chadian society”. It will go before MPs and…
Read More…her spheres. The most popular Qur’an reciters, for example, are dominantly Egyptian. Let’s hope Egypt develops democratically; in that case, very quickly we’ll see Egypt’s religious culture birth new movements and tendencies which seek to marry their historical religious legitimacy and the energy of their recent revolution. Without a doubt, Egypt has played a key and perhaps unparalleled role in the last two centuries of Middle Eastern Islam, and…
Read More…cause it is evolving and changing by the moment. This is the moment that new civil society organizations, including new universities and think tanks, sprouting up across the Gulf will prove their worth and all those young Gulf-citizens will truly earn their PhDs. 4. Muslims are tired of how politics has been defined by and in the West. Perhaps the time has come to redefine what politics means? Realpolitik, the Kissingerian-Nixonian view of i…
Read More…the crowd, or donated by the tea-shop owner – its just another part of the Egypt I have always known. But the Egypt I have known would never have seen people feeling free to voice their criticisms of the president so strongly or openly – that type of attitude certainly existed prior to this uprising, but was limited to private meetings, or outside of Egypt. In that Square, while it is still the same country that we have always known, there was som…
Read More…ed to the destruction of a police station and the killing of an officer. – New York Times, April 28, 2014 Egypt’s military-backed government has followed a pattern established by a long line of Egyptian political leaders who have exhibited public religiosity and presented themselves as men of God. Notably, the recently-ratified constitution—drafted by a group of fifty people hand-selected by the nation’s military-installed president—did not do awa…
Read More