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Extra-Terrestrial Kitsch: Capricology #4

By Anthea Butler

…er—“Gingerbread,” which my son and I discussed in an essay published in my book, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers. Basically, “Gingerbread” depicted the cultural logic of moral panic—how the desire of parents to “protect” their children at “all costs,” becomes increasingly more destructive. A key sequence in “Gingerbread” centered on a locker search, where our sympathies were clearly aligned with the students, as normal aspects of youth culture are looke…

The Lesser and the Greater Pilgrimage

By Amina Wadud

…cred occasion to perform hajj? I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted. All the books say, once you have donned the ihram you should head straight to Makkah. Good thing too—I have nothing that recommends Jeddah to me. It is sort of like an inflatable Eiffel tower. I will be both anxious and excited about the real thing. Then, the books say, once you get to Makkah you should go straight to Masjid al-Haram, entering gate al-Salaam. There I will perform t…

Al-Qur’an and Me

By Amina Wadud

…rom there, I returned to my university equipped with a small “how to pray” booklet, and a lot of library books. I’m sure all that reading brought more questions than answers, but that was all I had. I was once again in the closet of stories. Four months later, I was talking to some neighborhood friends about it and one of them gave me a copy of the Qur’an. That was undoubtedly the greatest gift I have ever received. When I started reading it the w…

Of Mosques and Men

By Amina Wadud

…eant I had no family schedule. I lived in a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual perfo…

“My Name is Will and I’m Putting You on Notice”

By Lauri Lebo

…who last year took a stand and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class. Will believes that until gays and lesbians receive the same rights and recognition as heterosexuals in this country, the phrase “liberty and justice for all” is just a farce and he refuses to be a part of it. Phillips was speaking at the Big Commit Sunday in Washington DC, a counter-rally to the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage’s wrap up of its “Summer for…

As Gays More Accepted, Religious Opponents More Vocal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nion as dramatically as support for gay and lesbian rights. Since 1994 the numbers really pop off the charts over a 20-year period. These trends occur across all religious communities. So the white evangelical fundamentalists today are far more accommodating to gays and lesbians than they were twenty years ago. So are Catholics and mainline Protestants.” Despite that growing accommodation, some more conservative religious leaders—especially those…

Is This Light?

By Amina Wadud

…this morning I offered to drive my daughter and my grandson to their mommy class at 9:30 with the reasoning I would start my blog after that, and still have it done before noon. Only for that I have an appointment with myself at 10. It’s avoidance, for sure. But why? Whenever I think of surat-al-Nur, I want to say I think about the passages about divine light nur an ‘ala nur. But alas, it’s the gender and society stuff that always gets stuck in my…

I Am Better than Him

By Amina Wadud

…n; I am this nationality; I am this religion; I am in this social economic class; I am any category of a number of things: including food consumption. Because I am this or that, then I am better than you. Sure oppression, or zulm, as it’s referred to in the Qur’an, also requires power: the power to exploit the differences as such, but even that is interesting in the way it is discussed in the Qur’an. For one thing, in the Qur’anic stories of Satan…

Ted Haggard on ‘Loveless’ Evangelical Church

By Lauri Lebo

…lacking in today’s evangelical churches. He says he can’t find a seminary class exclusively devoted to teaching future leaders about love. He can’t find any megachurch conferences that have one workshop developed to teaching about how to love one another. “It’s not surprising that we’ve developed a loveless church,” Haggard says. Since June, at the Pikes Peak Center (Cheech and Chong will be performing their Getting Legal tour there Oct. 16), Hag…

The “F” Word: Feminism in Islam

By Amina Wadud

…here. In addition, in every Muslim context, minority or majority, in every class from the very poor or basic to the very wealthy and affluent, Muslim women are active in the promotion of their own well being as well as the well being of others. Everywhere. Certainly the scope of their activities or the impact will vary according to many factors, but we need to put the rest the notion that we are waiting to be saved. Especially when the idea of bei…