Religion Dispatches
…her spheres. The most popular Qur’an reciters, for example, are dominantly Egyptian. Let’s hope Egypt develops democratically; in that case, very quickly we’ll see Egypt’s religious culture birth new movements and tendencies which seek to marry their historical religious legitimacy and the energy of their recent revolution. Without a doubt, Egypt has played a key and perhaps unparalleled role in the last two centuries of Middle Eastern Islam, and…
Read More…cause it is evolving and changing by the moment. This is the moment that new civil society organizations, including new universities and think tanks, sprouting up across the Gulf will prove their worth and all those young Gulf-citizens will truly earn their PhDs. 4. Muslims are tired of how politics has been defined by and in the West. Perhaps the time has come to redefine what politics means? Realpolitik, the Kissingerian-Nixonian view of i…
Read More…the crowd, or donated by the tea-shop owner – its just another part of the Egypt I have always known. But the Egypt I have known would never have seen people feeling free to voice their criticisms of the president so strongly or openly – that type of attitude certainly existed prior to this uprising, but was limited to private meetings, or outside of Egypt. In that Square, while it is still the same country that we have always known, there was som…
Read More…ed to the destruction of a police station and the killing of an officer. – New York Times, April 28, 2014 Egypt’s military-backed government has followed a pattern established by a long line of Egyptian political leaders who have exhibited public religiosity and presented themselves as men of God. Notably, the recently-ratified constitution—drafted by a group of fifty people hand-selected by the nation’s military-installed president—did not do awa…
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…t how “bad” things are, asserting several times that if Republicans lose in 2024 “there’s no coming back.” And interestingly enough, out of all four presidential candidates present at the summit, it was Trump who not only got the most enthusiastic reception, but also used the most explicit God talk. In his disinformation-filled rant, Trump referred to the “joyful warriors” in the audience as victims of “demented persecution,” spoke of the importan…
Read More…de, we sounded a note of caution here at RD about the “dark side” of honor code enforcement. After all, the honor code had been created during the 1960s in an effort by ultra-conservative BYU President Ernest Wilkinson to root out liberals, and honor code enforcement (including anonymous referrals) had been used to bait and harrass feminist, liberal, and gay students, shut down campus free speech, and compromise the privacy of pastoral counseling…
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…d on the tourist sector. That’s worth keeping in mind when people ask if a new Egypt will be a pro-Hamas Egypt. 2. Why, How Many Tanks and Planes You Have Any post-Mubarak regime will have to incorporate not only the military’s interests, but reward the military (assuming the revolution succeeds, it’ll only succeed with military support). The same Egyptian military that gets $1.3 billion from the United States in aid every year doesn’t want to je…
Read More…e David Brooks, have remarked, the question to be posed now is not whether Egypt is ready for democracy or not—that ship has sailed. The relevant question is: are Egyptians ready to uphold the rule of law regardless of the political consequences? The creation of just, ordered societies is in fact the primary objective of the Muslim political tradition—and Muslim scholars often took it upon themselves to promote this, sometimes even overriding rel…
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…his point, Wilson, a slavery apologist who has thrown his support behind abusers, claimed: [I]t used to be that the sexually troubled had to keep their kinks hidden away in the closet, but now the conservative Christian has to keep their virtues hidden in the recesses of the closet. “Appeal to Heaven” jokes—with democracy as the punchline Attempting to inject some levity into his remarks, Wilson joked about the recent revelation that an insurrecti…
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…elicals reportedly voted for Trump in 2016, the percentage dropped to 76 percent in 2020, though experts contend that White evangelical support for Trump is “remarkably stable and consistently strong.” AFPI believes that if they can get back to 81, or even part way, that could make the difference in 2024. But wherever Wallnau, AFPI, and their partners go this election season, and whatever the outcomes of elections at all levels in 2024, the strugg…
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