Religion Dispatches
…each other. It would have been easy to craft a story that divided Copts in Egypt from Muslims and Jews and Muslims because of these stereotypes. Although, if you actually watch the film, you see that it is filled with recycled anti-Semitic portrayals of the man interested only in money and “good” women. Instead of looking for “savages” over “there,” perhaps we should look at home. The creators of this film wanted it to create violence and almost…
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…empowered publics eager to see policy changes. Hamas even recognized that Egypt wanted to restore itself as a leader of the Arab world, and would jump at the opportunity. Pillar of Cloud was made the means by which that would happen—the Netanyahu government was surprisingly slow to understand that. But once it did, not much clarity of action emerged. And I’d push this argument on the Arab Spring’s effects still further. The uprisings, with their…
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…terious impotence. The American young adult is powerless while the average Egyptian’s salary is roughly $2000 per year? The Egyptian educational system is far less developed than America’s, and the opportunities for young people are far less numerous. So for young Egyptians fighting Mubarak’s rule, the fight really wasn’t fair. But Mayer and his friends “don’t have the means” to rise above? It seems to me that the song’s one false statement is tha…
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…ppression against a variety of minority, political and religious groups in Egypt since 2013, when the military took control of the government.” Meanwhile, scores of Egyptian legislators are lobbying for a law that would explicitly criminalize homosexual acts to ensure harsher penalties by replacing a 1961 anti-prostitution law that has been used against LGBT people for decades. “Homosexuality” is not clearly defined or mentioned in Egyptian law, s…
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…in part because they opposed his brutal regime—that murderously restricted free speech as well. When a writer is accused of blasphemy, it’s easy for us to be outraged. But when a writer is punished by a government we support, perhaps because that support advances our national security interests, we have rather less to say. Only recently, The New York Times extensively reported on the abuse, torture, solitary confinement, and even executions that a…
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…the way the world itself was made.” While the ritual aspects of the Mosaic code aimed at guiding the Israelites, the theological, ontological, and ethical principles, continued into the Second Testament, aim at guiding all. The human task is to grapple with those principles—to discern how they promote our flourishing—and to further them secondarily, as co-creators. Why is such attention given to the stranger and what good could come from offering…
Read More…f states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms,” it said. You can download the text of the resolution. Free and Equal, the UN Campaign for LGBT Equality, released a video made during the September opening of the UN General Assembly. The UN Human Rights Office and members of the Core Group on LGBT Rights at the UN set up a photo booth and invited visitors – in…
Read More…n Bangladesh are Muslim, and same-sex relations are banned under the penal code “left behind by the British colonial authorities.” Caribbean: Activists Say Region Lags Far Behind Latin America Last week we noted the historic gathering of LGBT activists from Latin America and the Caribbean which took place in Peru earlier this month. The Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers interviewed a number of Caribbean LGBT advocates who agreed that “the movement…
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…ral obliteration. “There is no Jew or Greek” stands alongside “no slave or free” and “no male and female.” These are not distinctions of religion and culture, but of power and privilege. In the world of Greek and Roman antiquity, free men had power and agency, slaves and women did not. The creed was originally built on an ancient cliché that went something like this: I thank God every day that I was born a native, not a foreigner; free and not a s…
Read More…ght legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom, claims “the future of religious freedom depends on a free pulpit to communicate fundamental, biblical principles to congregations across America” and urges pastors to “join a growing movement of bold pastors preaching Biblical Truth about candidates and elections from their pulpits.” In AU’s letter, executive director the Rev. Barry Lynn argues that “it would be detrimental for our country and the democra…
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