Religion Dispatches
…t this did make me think about the phenomenon of interfaith as it is being promoted these days. First of all, this is not an idea promoted by the oppressed to invite others to celebrate their faith. It is something those already in power or with privilege extend to make an opening or orchestrate a collective. This means, those who do get invitations are usually at a disadvantage. If nothing else, it could be from the mere organizational standpoint…
Read More…lf about it: wait for her no matter how late, rather than jump the gun because I’m an early riser. Truth be told, my children have come to that place where it’s very hard to know what to do for a person who demands to be so self-sufficient. You’d think they’d also know I would gladly take any little symbol of love. For all the profundity, I have come to see that it is the thought that counts. If I am overlooked altogether, I do feel slighted. I th…
Read More…elonging “within the two spheres, the changeable and the unchangeable… Because, beyond the sphere of destruction, they saw the sphere of salvation; because in the doom of the temporal, they saw the manifestation of the Eternal” In Islamic literature I hoped I would also find a cogent and viable spiritual system that linked the mystical and intellectual musings to what I was experiencing as a daily reality. The significance of Tillich’s work was it…
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…arily to small elites, in addition to tribal and social organizations that promote a culture of authoritarianism. Outside of the Arab world, there are long-term functional democracies in Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. More recently installed democratic governments in Pakistan and Palestine further challenge old stereotypes about the links between Islamicate cultures and representative governments. Such facts on the ground clearly est…
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…ho are disenchanted, or crave the satisfaction of being part of a larger cause no matter how degenerate it may appear to their fellow citizens. But this is not the whole story — and pretending that we can explain away sectarian clashes as if this were a baseball league will not make them so. Why is it that the radical groups appeal to exclusive theologies for their legitimacy? Even a one-time “street thug,” as a Pentagon official described the ear…
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…n just redo the mistake and it should go away. But a hole is left open because something very human in the act of forgiveness is left out. Today we commemorate the famous march on Washington, let us hope the offense of racism finds such recompense in America. In Malaysia and Indonesia, at the end of Ramadan there is a custom to seek forgiveness zahir and batin for offenses done knowing and unknowingly. We do not know all the time how our actions a…
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…Wirathu as one of the main figures in Myanmar’s pattern of human rights abuse against Muslims, particularly the Rohingya who live in the northern portion of Rakhine province adjacent to Bangladesh. Though the Rohingya people claim to have lived in the region for centuries, many Burmese regard them as aliens, and the most recent government census refused to let them identify themselves on the rolls as Rohingya rather than Bengalis. Wirathu has bee…
Read More…ed with sex. Sex, being part of human nature, is of concern to humans, because they are human. We just had a state try to block the recognition of gay marriage, which I think comes down to private behavior. Actually I’d be kind of weirded out if we weren’t talking about sex. It is, after all, integral to us. Third, I can’t tell you how many American Muslims I know whose parents simply refuse to allow them to major in anything except science. We ar…
Read More…ance of LGBTQ people. “According to a poll conducted by Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCR) in 2013, around half of Taiwanese support same sex unions whereas 75% of the opposition came from the Christian community. In addition, there are also Taiwanese who oppose same-sex unions on the grounds of upholding traditional Chinese family tradition,” she notes. “Therefore, if the same logic is applied to Indonesia then I think ‘I…
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…grants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, or Somalia, they would ransack houses, steal meager belongings, and maybe even drag them out into the street to beat them up, stab them and set them on fire—in the very same way that informants were “necklaced,” burned alive, during apartheid. The trouble began in the historic black township of Alexandra, but spread rapidly to other areas of Johannesburg and eventually to Cape Town and Durban. All in all,…
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