Religion Dispatches
The year President Sadat was killed I lived in Cairo. That was 1981. Egypt is just across the water from the Saudi Arabian peninsula so it occurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and w…
Read More…ructs: “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Leviticus 19:34 is even more direct: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” 4. Ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So much for “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) or Jesus’ admonishment to “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the…
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…women cover their heads, how’s this?: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain. That’s 15 countries, including the most populous, Egypt. And while I’m not sure about The Sudan, there are of course strong restrictions around women’s dress in Saudi Arabia. That’s possibly 2 countries for the other side. (In fact, in the whole Muslim world, only two oth…
Read More…ggingheads segment on how the American right is spinning the revolution in Egypt, and using it as an opportunity to perpetuate myths about shari’ah law. We not only discussed the situation in Egypt, but how some conservative activists are using this opportunity to raise a panic about the supposed infiltration of shari’ah law in the United States, and how all of this could play out in states where politicians are seeking to ban shari’ah, and in Rep…
Read More…ama administration has been working with him to coordinate the protests in Egypt.” (emphasis added). In my long piece about the shari’ah conspiracy theory industry earlier this month, I noted: ACT!, along with several conservative websites, has promoted the conspiracy theory that Obama has “quietly” appointed people with Brotherhood ties to top positions in his administration in order to orchestrate uprisings in the Muslim world. According to this…
Read More…t know if it’s any consolation but on my first attempt at making hajj from Egypt in 1981 I was stopped at the gate because I did not have a mahram. This was a question I asked my travel agent before I submitted my deposit. At my age there is no restriction, but for all you young and fine ladies, there are ways to get around it— including what they did in Egypt but I did not learn about in time, and that is that the hosting travel agent can act as…
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…ner in a land that is not his. The Jew must remember his history, first in Egypt and later in other exiles, of being a guest in another people’s land. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel pleaded with Israel not to deport the children. “Where is the Jewish spirit, the Jewish heart and the Jewish compassion?” The sides were protagonists in an age-old Jewish dispute. Shas’s Yishai represented the particularistic, parochial protector of J…
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…Misseriya. Then, like thousands of displaced Sudanese, William migrated to Egypt, hoping to be resettled to the West by the UN refugee agency in Cairo. But since the 2005 peace accords officially ended the second Sudanese civil war, the Southern Sudanese are no longer recognized as refugees. After a brutal Egyptian police raid on a Sudanese protest in Cairo, William, like many Sudanese refugees, paid Bedouin smugglers for passage across the South…
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…ganizing director and as a member of the board (1973-1981). Getting Out of Egypt Why David Sometime Wins opens with an eye-opening history of largely unsuccessful farm worker organizing from the mid-19th century. Ganz explains how the exploitation of migrant, immigrant labor and people of color who happened to be citizens, has been integral to the business model of California agribusiness from the beginning; starting with unemployed Chinese railro…
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…ts in history. The document stated that the Pope could “give, grant, and assign” any land to Spanish and Portuguese colonizers that they “discovered,” which was not already “in the actual possession of any Christian king.” This was driven by a binary logic of Europeans perceived as Christians and the indigenous people as “enemies of Christ” who would be civilized through forced conversion. Drawing on a supersessionist logic that it was the Christi…
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