Religion Dispatches
…say, well I disagree, or even, I think it is wrong; but then the matter is between the person and Allah. When your disagreement must put you between a person and Allah, you have just sunk as low as you can go. Nothing you can say or do would exonerate your perspective in my mind. It is true that there is much more work going on the issue of same-sex relations. There are nuanced interpretations of the Qur’an there are more thorough searches of hist…
Read More…pid rule especially for hajj. At some other point I might tell you what my Saudi friend does in order to travel alone as a woman but that will surely come up later. Abdul-Hayy said that complications on the hajj are not necessarily only about gender or more precisely only experienced by women. His is an interesting attestation of that. So while this is true and he gave evidence of it, this blog is precisely about gender and about being a woman. I…
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…Woodward denies he held, he was a frequent visitor to the White House. The Saudi Royal Family: Baker details the Bush family’s personal, political, and business connections to the Saudi royal family; and to apparent international slush funds and money-laundering schemes. Much of this is told in such a matter-of-fact fashion that it is easy to lose sight of the significance of many of the individual facts. Read more here. The layers of secrecy were…
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…criminalization of same-sex relations was removed from country’s the Penal Code in 1951. However, decriminalization alone has not ensured complete freedom for members of Jordan’s LGBT community. Article Six of the Jordanian Constitution protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race, language or religion, but these protections do not extend to people of variant sexual identity. This gray area is where discrimination still manages to pl…
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…uip in the classroom, a historian’s favorite hand is “the other hand.” For better or for worse, I am professionally trained as a historian. Thus, despite my respect for American-style free speech, I recognize that some states have crafted social contracts that accept greater limitations on speech than we do in the US, in order to protect other democratic values. As both classic liberal and communitarian theorists recognize, fundamental modern demo…
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…
Read More…e law—neither the Torah nor the laws of the Roman Church. The Christian is free from condemnation, free to obey God joyfully, and free to make individual choices about earthly matters—even including usury (lending money at interest). So thus far it may seem that Calvin put his stamp of approval on the market free-for-all that’s so popular with bankers, business owners, financiers, and Brat voters. In her post on RD Julie Ingersoll helpfully sums u…
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…Over time, the churches that have tried to lighten up the Christian moral code and put forth sort of a kindler, gentler version of Christianity as they see it, have not done well. They have not done well demographically and they haven’t done well financially. Churches that stick to orthodoxy do better over time because in part it’s only those churches that tend to create families that can be of size and carry on the Christian tradition. This hark…
Read More…e original ruling by the judge stated that satire in its own right did not promote enmity between groups. In fact, satire of religious actions and beliefs right is a long tradition in India. The 11th century Kashmiri Sanskrit poet Kshemendra, in works such as Samaya Matrika, Kalavilasa, and Narmamala, satirizes brahminical and Buddhist norms with rapier wit. (Kshemendra, by the way, also wrote serious devotional and poetic works.) My colleagues in…
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…ars. You, the voters. We believe him against the evidence because it feels better to believe that his life—his survival, bound and tied, long ago—is a testimony to Jesus’ mercy. We feel better believing that nobody would ever, or could ever, lie about loving God, or lie about loving Christ. And despite our own schismatic compulsions (in daily life, in sectarian divide), we like to believe that all denominations look the same in the dark. Finally,…
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