Religion Dispatches
…they’re doing so over the advice of religious opponents, who echo a famous Indian guru: the Buddha. On July 7, 1993, Mia Zapata, lead singer for up-and-coming Seattle band The Gits, left a bar to walk home alone at 2 A.M. She never arrived. At 3:20, a prostitute found her body in an alley, raped, beaten, and strangled to death. Two decades later on December 16, 2012, after boarding a minibus in Delhi, India, Jyoti Singh Pandey didn’t make it home…
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…legation spoke for nearly an hour about the so-called crisis of 1948, when India and Pakistan had been partitioned. In fact he was confusing the subcontinent for mandatory Palestine, as India and Pakistan were partitioned in 1947. He railed on and on about British imperialism, and the nefarious designs of the English monarchy upon South Asia—you can’t make this stuff up—and concluded by suggesting that India and Pakistan, which were apparently on…
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…nly as being holy, of one people as specially chosen. Then he sets out for India. What happens there is predictable enough: “The common people were his friends, believed in him, and followed him in throngs. The priests and rulers were afraid of him” (31: 2-3). Already, it would seem, Jesus is the teacher, not the student; which raises an important question for this Gospel and for this whole spiritual style. Why does Jesus travel the world? To stud…
Read More…t being a woman. I am writing it because my friends (women, including that Saudi friend I will no doubt have a chance to say more about) got so frustrated with some of the completely arbitrary and in some cases unofficial restrictions put upon women on the hajj. If traveling without a mahram is an official limitation and we can get around it, the ones that literally shout you in the face will perhaps make this journey difficult. So I wanted an out…
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…it did to Pakistani society. It began, he explained, with the excuse that Saudi Arabia had asked the government to filter non-Muslims from coming to Mecca for the Hajj: So they added a passage in every passport application, which is like eight lines, that has essentially vile statements against the prophet we believe in as the Messiah of the age. He’s a liar, he’s this, he’s that, and you have to sign that statement. In essence, an Ahmadi will no…
Read More…with the temptations of music, dancing and alcohol. Yet he disagreed with Saudi Arabia’s refusal to let women drive, saying it was not nearly as risky as the alternative — the prospect of women coming into physical contact with men while travelling by taxi or public transport. Speaking to reporters in Quebec City, Kathleen Weil, Quebec’s minister of immigration, diversity and inclusion, said Mr. Chaoui’s views are “dangerous” and “unacceptable” i…
Read More…rted that “if we don’t wake up, we will soon be like Britain . . . or even Saudi Arabia.” He had support on the panel, too, with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Erik Stakelback calling him “the Paul Revere of calling out the Muslim Brotherhood.” The audience was clearly in Gaffney’s camp, with murmurs of approval and even amens. One woman said she was from Minnesota, where “we practically have a Muslim state,” and fretted that Rep. Keith Elli…
Read More…ty that the definition of marriage is protected, sustained and supported.” India: Couple’s high-profile marriage in defiance of anti-gay law BuzzFeed reported last week on a gay couple that was married in a religious ceremony at the end of January. “A Sanskrit teacher conducted the ceremony in a traditional Marathi fashion,” the couple told BuzzFeed India. “And all the ceremonies including Mehendi, Haldi, Sangeet were performed….The couple faced a…
Read More…Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral. According to the latest WikiLeaks dump, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah once criticized the mutaween, who enforce Islamic behavior in his country, for treating people like donkeys. He said they take a stick and hit you with it, saying “Come donkey, it’s time to pray.” A new survey of Muslims around the world reveals mixed feelings about Hamas and Hezbollah but an outright rejection of al Qaeda by the majority of Muslims. S…
Read More…pain, and Spanish Premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to organize a joint Saudi-Spanish request to the UN for an Interfaith Council Although this hasn’t yet materialized, the Madrid meeting led directly to the recently concluded November 11-13 Saudi-sponsored “Culture of Peace” conference at the UN, another activity that de Venecia has advocated. According to the Associated Press, the two-day conference was called to promote a global dialogue abo…
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