Religion Dispatches
…by these lights, there are a great many countries we ought to be invading—Sudan, at a minimum. Not bombing, invading. So the ouster of Saddam Hussein was hung, once again, on a larger geopolitical canvas and a very bold dream: the irresistible march of freedom and democracy, a successful Iraq serving as a beacon for similar aspirations of other less-free peoples in this long-suffering region. But that is an impossible dream to sell today, given h…
Read More…t from wrong? Muslim couples dealing with infertility face religious as well as medical difficulties when trying to start a family. Some Jewish women in Jerusalem have taken to wearing the burqa. A group of Orthodox rabbis has banned the use of the full-body covering. In Sudan, 19 Muslim men were sentenced to 30 lashes and a fine for wearing women’s clothing at a party. NBA star Amar’e Stoudemire did not go to Israel to discover his Jewish roots,…
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…t of Ethiopians think homosexuality should be outlawed. Unlike Mauritania, Sudan, and Northern Nigeria, Ethiopia doesn’t mandate the death penalty for same-sex sexual acts, but thanks to draconian laws that forbid activism while allowing Western evangelicals to promote homophobia, Ethiopia is on track to join their ranks. “In many countries, it’s getting better for the LGBT community,” says reporter Katie J.M. Baker. “In Ethiopia, it’s getting wor…
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…and the 1998 U.S. missile attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the Clinton administration had allegedly believed to be a chemical weapons factory. The ensuing debate, which occurred over a four-day email exchange, is the most uneven public intellectual bout in recent memory. Chomsky repeatedly called out Harris’s rhetorical evasions and sloppy thinking, at one point describing one of Harris’s arguments as “so ludicrous as…
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…rage sexual relations and childbearing outside of the marital bond, and to promote the institution of marriage as the best environment for children. The article on religion is noteworthy for affirming a positive “Right to a Religion”—in contrast to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, the standard in accepted international instruments. Here again, the Declaration cites the UDHR but omits its crucial inclusion of the “freedom to change” be…
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…cide (when in fact the UN’s human rights apparatus has only gently slapped Sudan on the wrist while congratulating them for their “cooperation” with investigators)—the central story flaw would remain: the Durban process is not really about fighting racism and discrimination, over which it of course has no real power. When all is said and done, Durban is an exercise in symbolic political speech that is not legally binding on member states. As the n…
Read More…with the marginalized” that their members experience, the issue studies on Sudan, immigration and other subjects they have done, their longstanding mission to the UN and lobbying office in DC. Let me say upfront that there’s nothing wrong with those answers. Had I been in their shoes, I probably would have given the same ones. And let me be equally upfront in saying that I muffed my questions a bit. What I was trying to ask, and couldn’t quite art…
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…ries, including the most populous, Egypt. And while I’m not sure about The Sudan, there are of course strong restrictions around women’s dress in Saudi Arabia. That’s possibly 2 countries for the other side. (In fact, in the whole Muslim world, only two other countries legally mandate the veil: Iran and Afghanistan.) There must be an explanation for why a journalist would make such a broad, unsubstantiated statement, and it returns us to the simpl…
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…ual in our history. The United States has a long history of racism being encoded into law, and manifesting in law, on a regular basis. The story of internment of Americans of Japanese descent is perhaps the one that is most recent in our collective memory, partly because of George Takei’s tireless work to keep those stories alive. However, not even a generation before, we could not decide as a nation who deserved citizenship. Founded on a belief t…
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…what UN Ambassador Nikki Haley had in mind when she pledge to ‘unabashedly promote American values.’” C-Fam has teamed up Russia and anti-equality African and Islamist nations to try to undermine the Council’s newly created independent expert, who is charged with investigating discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. CNN reported this month on the ways that Donald Trump’s travel ban and suspension of refu…
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