Religion Dispatches
…The curtain of fear has been lifted. As they were saying on the protests: Egyptians have had their taste of freedom, and they won’t lose that taste easily. “Umm… well, I was working a bit yesterday?” Muhammad decided to let him off. “OK. You can go on.” As the cop was stopped at the roadblock, someone took a picture of him. The cop immediately reacted, forgetting which time he was living in. “Why is he taking pictures of me?!” Muhammad just shr…
Read More…regime.” And that has led to more frequent and public arrests even though Egypt “does not explicitly criminalize same-sex activity.” Last month a doctor was sentenced to a year in jail after someone reported him to “morality police.” More from Plummer: A special section of Egyptian law enforcement monitors so-called “moral crimes” in the country. Typically targeting homosexual men and transgender people, this police unit increasingly monitors soc…
Read More…hosting gay sex parties as part of a brutal crackdown on homosexuality in Egypt. The men were stood accused of hosting so-called “deviant parties” and cross-dressing in women’s clothes. Three were sentenced to eight years and a fourth to three years behind bars on trumped up debuachery charges. The news comes after it emerged that three men arrested for so-called indecent acts (dressing in womens’ clothing) last month at a party in Nasr City, ar…
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…Jews don’t eat anything leavened during Passover, to remember that we fled Egypt in such a rush we couldn’t even let the bread finish rising. The eight-day holiday is about remembering this historical moment—Exodus, our liberation from slavery in Egypt—and also about seeing the world as a stranger, through someone else’s eyes. Khalid and I take a break from the cramped newsroom where we work for lunch. I’m an editor at an English newspaper in Sana…
Read More…of the family’ was only a means to an end. This emerged most critically in Egypt’s statement introducing the resolution. As Egypt noted, Speaking about absolute and unspecified diversity can be an invitation to cast protection on family settings where human rights may not flourish to be respected. Family is family everywhere as a unit that bonds men, women and children together…[family] should remain reflective of similar essence and shared values…
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…sands of troops, diplomats, and other Americans still stationed there. His promotion of this latest film has now contributed in some way to violence in Libya and Egypt, and that includes the death of one of our best ambassadors. We are on the precipice of war with Iran. The Middle East is deeply unstable, and we are unfortunately caught up in much of that uncertainty. This is not the time for inflammatory action; there are anti-democratic forces i…
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…ommon sense” and dare the wilderness of madness if we are ever to be truly free and “break on through to the other side.” This, and not the vote, is what Freedom means. 4. For the historians and theologians: it is time for a reconsideration of the old neo-orthodox sensibility. I respect Edwards and Barth and Niebuhr. The romantic enthusiasm of the sixties ended in Manson’s nihilism and led to post-modernism’s solipsism. Paglia was right: romantic…
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…religion. It is ironic, rights groups argue, that the Coptic community in Egypt is taking a page out of fundamentalism’s book in attacking the author. One Egyptian writer, who asked not to be named as concern over a possible court case gains steam, says that Islamic conservatives were quick to attack Salman Rushdie over his Satanic Verses and death threats and fatwas were issued against the Indian author. “Now, the Coptic community appears to be…
Read More…shed Bahgat’s account of his ordeal, which concludes defiantly: I wish for freedom for the thousands of people unfairly detained in Egyptian prisons. I reassert my rejection of the criminalization of journalistic work, the use of the Penal Code to imprison journalists, and the trial of civilians in military courts. Azerbaijan: Activist Flees Persecution, Struggles in Germany Alturi.org has published a profile of Cavid, an Azerbaijani human rights…
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…ocation of Koranic verses. He reports that ISIS supporters “often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam,” and that they, “spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar.” These people speak with authority, so they must be authoritative. So the logic goes. In the article, Wood relies on the familiar Protestant notion tha…
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