Religion Dispatches
…tly, the Boston Review covered the rise of a worryingly far-right party in Hungary, and its attendant anti-Semitic impulses, whether explicit or implicit. Breivik’s screeds link Marxists and multiculturalists and blames both for a defense of Muslims; “Marxist” is often a stand-in for Jewish, as the rootless population that, in this case, enables an imagined Islamic conquest—Jews as the ultimately rootless, Muslims as rootless (migratory) but also…
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…ania in the early modern period, and into the Middle East, Greece, Russia, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire by the nineteenth century. The famous so-called Damascus Affair of 1840, which saw Jewish leaders from Western Europe defend Syrian Jews from the blood libel, stimulated treatises by anti-Semitic agitators, along with scholars who defended Jews and pseudo-scholars who falsely claimed that Jewish texts support ritual murder. The blood libel wa…
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…lic forums on the topic. The National Action party, he said, would seek to promote a civil contract but not a marriage. Arturo Sandoval, governor of Jalisco, joined Guadalajara’s Pride march and called for respect, inclusion and tolerance. The governor’s Facebook page included a range of comments both in support and opposition, with some citing the teachings of the Catholic Church and criticizing the governor for not having joined an earlier “pro-…
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…ubt that homosexuality is seen as a crime. Article 427 of the Afghan penal code refers only to “pederasty” – a sexual act between males, one of them understood to be a youth or a boy. The act is punishable with “long imprisonment”. However Dr Niaz Shah of Hull University in the UK, an expert in Afghan and Islamic law, says that the penal code reflects the underlying Islamic principle that homosexuality is banned. “Islamic law allows only one form…
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…o gambling, to extramarital sexual relations. The province’s 2014 Criminal Code bars both male and female same-sex behavior. Under its Sharia ordinances, Aceh imposed cane lashing against 339 people in 2016; a punishment recognized under international law as torture. To make matters worse, local government officials have aggressively stoked homophobia. … Knight writes that Indonesia “has historically been a unique beacon of tolerance for LGBT peop…
Read More…Report on legal case involving mistreatment by parents The Center for the Promotion and Defense of Sexual and Reproductive Rights (PROMSEX) reports on the legal case of Antonella Rabanal Roca, who says she was abused by her mother and stepfather because of her sexual orientation. PROMSEX cites the parents’ membership in the World Missionary Movement, which it calls “one of the evangelical churches that promotes speech and discriminatory practices…
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…ause Westerners have said this or that… The current provision of the Penal Code is a fair balance between conservative public opinion and an uncompromising international community on the protection of minorities.” Russia: Muslim ‘morality’ vigilante pushing for purge of LGBT teachers Timur Bulatov, a self-described pious Muslim is waging a campaign to out LGBT teachers and get them fired, according to BBC: He wages his “morality” campaign from St…
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…costs for LGBT people are a result of some abnormal activity. (Yes, that’s code for anal sex. Or gender-affirming surgeries. Or marrying the person you love most in the world, if that person happens to have the same gender marker as you.) Given that it took the president-elect more than three weeks—and upwards of 700 documented hate-crime incidents—to “denounce and reject” the hatred his scorched-earth campaign emboldened, I have zero confidence t…
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…oposed legislation that would update the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, so that “gender identity and gender expression would be considered a distinguishing feature of a person, and one’s right to live free of discrimination, harassment and violence based on that feature would be recognized and protected by the Canadian legal system.” Africa: A call for reflection on advocacy structures and strategies Last week Pambazuka News published “Wh…
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…denying that Judaism is a religion (instead, it’s an ideology, or a legal code, or an international cabal), and emphasizing definitions of Judaism rooted in physical heritage. This nudge toward biology makes sense. For one thing, it’s easier to judge somebody’s identity based on ancestry than on beliefs and cultural traditions. The latter is pretty nebulous. The former is quantifiable. Also, bigots haven’t historically cared much about the person…
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