Religion Dispatches
…we find an investment advisor named Sean Hyman pushing “The Biblical Money Code,” which claims that advice “woven” into Scripture has helped him go from earning $15,000 to giving away up to $50,000 a year. Unlike Hovind, Hyman is giving away his system for free. All you have to do is sit through an hour-long video, during which Hyman explains how “to unlock vast amounts of wealth safely and ethically.” Fancy explanations are provided, but it’s act…
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…ke away that free will, except for those who have the capacity to hack the code and reprogram the car. We normally think of robots as almost pure code, yet the scene last week when Graystone orders the Zoebot to rip off her arm raises some interesting stakes in this. It seems to me that people may be treating the Cylons differently depending on what mix of code and law they believe governs their behavior. And of course, those of you who study reli…
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…hey oppose the distribution of condoms in prisons on the grounds that this promotes homosexuality. Supported by the churches, the prison service promotes abstinence as its main prevention approach. Lithuania: Conservative manifesto calls LGBT movement tyrannical A coalition of religious and intellectual leaders released a manifesto that condemned the 2016 Baltic Pride celebration “as an attack on human nature and the public good that follows in th…
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…h — as in more than 70 other countries in the world, including neighboring India. The mass arrests come on the heels of a recent high-profile case in Indonesia, where two men were sentenced to public lashings for gay sex under a strict new provincial sharia law. Bangladesh’s legal code prohibits “unnatural offenses,” which it says includes voluntary “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal.” The offense is puni…
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…s an overly simplistic understanding of the complex history of violence in India, and between India and Pakistan, fostering a global narrative that ignores local events and local causes. Indeed, what strikes me most about the horrific events in Mumbai is the local sense of place that that the terrorists tried to destroy. In the Mumbai attack, the violence mirrored Mumbai itself: sprawling, horizontal, through the sea and then on the ground. No one…
Read More…territory: East and West Pakistan, separated by over one thousand miles of India. Unsurprisingly, the two halves of Pakistan fell to bickering, then fell apart, their quarrels supported by an Indian regime that was interested in maintaining a weak neighbor to its north, and the predictable civil war that began in 1971 resulted in the creation of an independent Bagladesh. Since then, India and (West) Pakistan have fought two major wars of territori…
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…esolution on extrajudicial killings. It joined the ranks of countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Sudan. Suriname is member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). But that should not be a reason to sell out on its principles of equal rights and non-discrimination. Albania and Turkey for instance are also OIC member countries and vote consistently against OIC proposals. They join the countries that respect human rights for all. B…
Read More…from the lives of every LGBTQI Asian around the world, and particularly in India – where it can still be ‘a criminal offence’ if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual.” ‘Asian Future’ will feature the work of legendary artist, writer and activist Sunil Gupta, renowned for his honest portrayal of gay life around the world, including his native India where practicing homosexuality is essentially illegal. The exhibition will present a series of his photogra…
Read More…wheel. But the London Review of Books recently published two pieces that are exceptional. The first is Hugh Roberts’ essay on Egypt, The Revolution That Wasn’t, which I’m now reading a second time. Meanwhile, on their blog, Adam Shatz describes the (un)surprising convergence of Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which are concerned by Arab populism, Islamist mass movements, and Iranian policies and practices. (The odd country out here, which gets no…
Read More…orted the NCC’s opposition on same sex marriage he said: “Of course I do.” Saudi Arabia: New documentary, ‘A Sinner in Mecca’ will premiere in April Filmmaker Parvez Sharma’s “A Sinner in Mecca” will premiere at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto.at the end of April. From the festival website: Openly gay and a devout Muslim, Parvez Sharma embarks on a perilous pilgrimage to Mecca hoping to find an answer to this most personal question: is it possibl…
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