Religion Dispatches
…r life, respect for property, sobriety, etc. all seem identical to Western codes of conduct, they arise differently in Buddhism. The Decalogue was revealed by divine commandment. In Buddhism, there’s no creator deity. Nor is there any central Buddhist institution, such as a Vatican. Rather, in establishing one of humanity’s first monastic orders, the Buddha set forth a matrix and process of conscious behavior (vinaya) based on actual conduct. As s…
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…to be reckoned with and has myriad forms of expression, commitment, moral codes, and values—just like global Christianity. In the U.S., Muslims are increasingly part of the social landscape, with mosques, community centers, and public figures (including the first Muslim Miss America and the easy reelection of one of the two Muslim members of Congress) who contribute to the fabulous religious mosaic that characterizes the best of American values….
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…now change their legal gender in Norway as easily as filling a tax return. Iraq: Social media used to entrap gay men The Washington Blade interviewed Iraqi activist Ayaz Hassan, who says anti-gay militants are using social networks to identify gay men and kill them. Afghanistan: Activist charges security officials with waging extermination campaign Activist Nemat Sadat writes at Huffington Post that sources tell him Afghan security officials are e…
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…York Times reported from Istanbul on the story of Mohammed, a 26-year old Iraqi: For Mohammed, an Iraqi civil engineer, the cruelest experience of his life was not when his father tortured him for being gay. It was not when Islamic State extremists took over the 26-year-old’s hometown in northern Iraq, forcing him to flee to Turkey. Or when he says he was almost raped at knife point and later laughed out of a Turkish police station when he tried…
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…e part-time job finding rusted and useless Polish truck parts to ship into Iraq. Joey’s employer is a soulless, politically-connected outfit clearly modeled after KBR/Halliburton; Joey also falls momentarily under the spell of his UVA roommate’s armchair warrior father, a Martin Peretz-Richard Perle amalgam of swaggering self-importance. Walter explodes into cathartic rage against Haven’s treachery when he learns the unbearable truth of Patty’s lo…
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…milies and communities. A collection of photographs by Eric LaForrgue from Iraq—and one specifically featuring the Yezedi people taken in the year prior to their slaughter by ISIS—is one such artifact to which we can turn to see beyond the reign of terror that has ended so many lives. The images tell a story of rich and textured lives, lives better honored with a celebration of the quiet and noble business of living peacefully than with projection…
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…feeling after the invasion of Afghanistan, and again after the invasion of Iraq and rapid toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime) stressed war’s redeeming qualities for recapturing a national elan threatened by twins of industrialization and immigration, and the bitter social conflicts that arose from them. Those who decried this round of foreign adventurism, most notably Mark Twain, lambasted the hypocrisy of depending on the violence of war as a fo…
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…d gay men being thrown to their deaths off the top of a building in Mosul, Iraq. The first still image shows a crowd gathered on a square on a cloudy day. The shot is taken from the top of a brown building that appears to be seven or eight stories high. The caption at the bottom of the screen says, “The Muslims come to watch the application of the law.” The text accompanying one photograph refers to a prison as “one of Lot’s people.” According to…
Read More…” which is being brutally enforced across ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq. The extremist group’s radical interpretation of Shariah law requires punishments to be carried out in an Islamic State court. After sentencing, the prisoner is taken into the center of town where men and young boys are encouraged to gather and watch the punishments, which range from crucifixion for stealing to stoning for adultery. The British Government’s Foreign Off…
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…l Book Award winning collection Redeployment. “I didn’t want to talk about Iraq, so I wouldn’t tell anybody I’d been. And if people knew, if they pressed, I’d tell lies.” Williams’s Icarus-like downfall after attempting to fly too close to the sun of war brought to mind a lie I heard not too long ago told in a pulpit of another kind. Two years ago, a guest preacher visited a church I sometimes attend, and delivered one of the best sermons I’d hear…
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