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…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…o. The Muslim Brotherhood is therefore the strongest autonomous force in Egypt today. While the Brotherhood started out as a social movement, they overcame their reluctance to participate in formal opposition politics in 2005. They joined the street demonstrations of the Kifaya movement, engaged in debate on political reform and successful contested parliamentary elections, winning 88 out of 444 seats (having only contested 150 constituencies)….
Read More…mself with both the Coptic Christian Pope and the head of Al-Azhar Mosque, Egypt’s supreme Islamic authority. In the weeks and months since, the Egyptian regime has relied heavily on the Church and Al-Azhar, both of which have been staunch supporters. Shortly after the coup, various religious institutions announced their support for the military-backed government and for Morsi’s removal, sometimes defending the government against allegations that…
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…president, including George W. Bush. I expect they will stand by him in the 2024 election cycle, whether or not he receives a prison sentence as a result of the criminal indictments he currently faces. But whoever Joe Biden faces when the dust settles from the Republican primaries, Democrats will have to be ready to counter the Christian nationalist narrative of decline caused by the “godlessness” of “woke leftists” who have the audacity to believ…
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 from the world. Aggressive national policy will accomplish nothing for Egypt and the many Egyptians whose jobs depend 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…
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…ionalist slogan embraced by neo-Nazis since 2017. “I talked to Trump twice today!” For the evening session, Marco Rubio had been announced to give a keynote—but, as many attendees had already noticed, Rubio changed his dinner plans and skipped NatCon to attend the evening’s Trump rally in Miami in the hope that he’ll be tapped to be VP. Instead, Vivek Ramaswamy waxed on about the values of “national libertarianism.” Ramaswamy, maybe to show that h…
Read More…re part of a discussion about moderate Islam, are a historic milestone for Egypt’s religious institution. Along with the grand imam of al-Azhar mosque, the grand mufti of Egypt holds one of the highest positions on religious authority and plays an important role in determining opinions on religious law. Allam noted that other religious communities in Egypt, such as the Coptic Church, have also condemned homosexuality but say gays and lesbians shou…
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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