Religion Dispatches
…more religiously liberal neighboring countries, Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, to celebrate. Here we have valentines being smuggled like contraband. (Will we be hearing of Valentine’s Day “speakeasies,” next?) Were it not affecting the lives of millions of people, this would be comical. Even as a kid growing up in a Muslim-American family Boston in the 1970s, I found Saudi Arabia’s “Islamic” pretensions exceedingly fishy and hard to swallow….
Read MoreLast week, the United Arab Emirates appointed its first female marriage registrar, Fatima Saeed Obeid al-Awani. It’s the first country in the Arabian Peninsula to do so. This follows Egypt’s decision to appoint Amal Suleiman to the same position a few months ago. India also saw a woman preside over marriages as early as last August. Al-Awani’s appointment and those like it look to be following a wider trend of women playing a more public role in…
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…In their paper, Ho and his coauthors write that “visitors may decrease the number of incense sticks burned and period of stay at temples.” In my travels, I did visit temples that tried to suggest limits on how many incense sticks people should burn. Some temples have tried to deal with this problem by extinguishing incense sticks after they have been burning for a while. Particularly in Hong Kong, I sometimes saw large buckets of water standing ne…
Read More…to keep quiet as she suffered domestic and sexual abuse to a mufti in the Emirates who told a woman whose alcoholic husband was sexually and physically abusing her to get him to “find help” rather than divorce him, it seems that those in positions of knowledge just aren’t aware of the issues and dangers surrounding domestic violence. Until imams and scholars can understand the damaging effects of domestic violence and are willing to listen to wom…
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…on subsequently blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.” Exactly. 2) “Muslims … use cell phones and computers without necessarily seeing a conflict between their religious faith and the rationalist, secular mindset that made modern technology possible.” Driving on an interstate highway? You can probably thank the Nazis for that. What about nuclear power, radioactive isotopes, etc.? Guess who got us started there. First…
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…. 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 mother is viewed to h…
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…nts, in turn, are revealed to be a UAE sheik in charge of security for the Emirates and (wait for it) China. Some measure of useful exposition follows. The filmmakers want us to understand that the thing many Arab states and China fear most is instability created by food shortages. The African continent encompasses something like 50-60 percent of “undeveloped” arable land, making it the obvious target of a new scramble for Africa that echoes the o…
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…grants from their homes. They are pulled to the U.S. because of demand for cheap labor. One of the major pushes came in the ’90s with the passage of NAFTA, which opened the door to many agri-businesses to move farms down to Mexico, putting small farmers out of business. And while the number of undocumented border crossers is down, Brother David says, it will be virtually impossible to eliminate them as long as the opportunities for jobs exist. As…
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…abortion clinics, particularly Dr. Tiller’s, and were arrested in massive numbers. One local activist told me that nearly 25 anti-abortion groups had been birthed during the Summer of Mercy, some of which are still active. The protests so shaped the city that, 22 years later, both sides recall the fight vividly. Faced with what was initially meant to be a week of protests, Wichita officials requested that the clinic close, and Dr. Tiller complied…
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…w dozen yards of the riders and take pictures of the scene with their cell phone cameras. Traffic on College Avenue begins to pick up. “You’re protesting God!” a motorist hollers when he catches sight of one of the Soulforce banners. Finally a slender young man wearing a “CBC Soccer” jacket ventures all the way to the sidewalk. “I just kind of want to show them I care,” says Jonathan Jacobs, a junior at the college. Jacobs, whose family moved to C…
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