Religion Dispatches
…decades of my work on gender I refused to accept the label “feminist,” because of the politics of its use in the west. I gave my own title: pro-faith, pro-feminist. I was adamant that I would not bargain one against the other. This is probably because in the context of the west, the first time we begin to hear about Muslim women, we hear about them from some one other than Muslim women. Muslim men or non-Muslim women were our chief spokespersons….
Read More…tiff to ordain women. Should we really support a musician named Sufjan? In Saudi Arabia, two rulings by Muslim authorities have created controversy. First, a cleric who urged grown men to drink breast milk has been removed from the radio airwaves. Meanwhile, human rights advocates are urging authorities not to intentionally paralyze a man as “eye for an eye” punishment for injuries he inflicted in a fight. Drivers in South Carolina may soon be abl…
Read More…e synagogue in Alexandria, Va., is “the protocols of the learned elders of Saudi Arabia.” Rabbi Moline, named by Newsweek this year as one of the country’s top 25 pulpit rabbis, added, “The integrity of our own Jewish community requires that people speak up critically” about the film. Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, American Jewry’s official umbrella group for domestic issues, termed the content of “Obs…
Read More…op countries where Christians are persecuted like North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. Everywhere they are persecuted, Christians are working to change the system, through prayer, protest, or other actions. Yet, they would deny this kind of action to gay and lesbian people simply because we should take our time and stop and “listen” to why the people in Uganda want to kill or imprison us? Believe me, we’ve heard their reasons and they sma…
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…Asia and East Africa. For the Malikis in North Africa and the Hanbalis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, ensoulment occurs at day 40, with abortions allowed up to that time. On the basis of Qur’an 2:233, which states that the mother should not be made to suffer on account of the child, many Muslim jurists allow abortion even after the period of ensoulment, particularly if the life of the mother is threatened, since the life of the already living…
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…t without igniting a horrible civil war, one that Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia would not sit out. The best hope is that Iraqis will decide for integration and sovereignty, but it is up to them to decide whether they want a unitary state, a decentralized federation, three nations, or something else. I don’t want President Obama to make that decision or to commit U.S. troops to one of these outcomes. We must hold the Obama Administration to…
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…hose who argue for further Muslim Reformation are in fact arguing for more Saudi Arabia-like states and more bin Ladens in the world. It is this basic ignorance of tradition that allows people to sound as though they are speaking for a “good,” when they are actually promoting the “bad.” It is not a Reformation we need, but a Renaissance, a rebirth of the scholarly class as arbiters of interpretation. Just as Abd al-Wahhab was condemned by his fami…
Read More…slim equals some 20.3 million people—a population almost as large as Saudi Arabia’s. (More to the point, as one of China’s ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per family policy.) Notwithstanding the fervid prayers of some Olympic contestants, religion probably won’t be a major story during the Summer Games. But the Pew Forum’s findings are worth remembering: A growing number of urban, educated, 20-something Chinese men and wo…
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…ely discredited many Muslim thinkers and movements and has served as an excuse for authoritarian governments to refuse elections. There is of course genuine Muslim opposition to Iranian Islamist authoritarianism, found most obviously in Iran itself: the Green Movement, led by clerics, among others. But they also do so because they cannot impose their will on their societies, a lesson that’s been learned after the failure of the Iranian model—espec…
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…was the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. The current protests in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya face an uncertain end. Failure of nonviolent revolution has, in the past, been the occasion for renewed acts of violence. So the jihadi warriors may again have their day. For the moment, however, bin Laden is dead, and Tahrir Square has challenged both the strategic value and the moral legitimacy of the jihadi stance. The legion of young Muslim activ…
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