Religion Dispatches
…ia Avenue. I propose that we ban driving towards a safer world for babies. Saudi Arabia has taken the pioneering step by banning women from driving. The next courageous step is to ban driving altogether. This will eliminate all likelihood of rear-ending, lost babies, and dead pregnant women. Apart from driving, perhaps, indeed, the woman and her man ought to be fined for being pregnant. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant in the first place, why, she wo…
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…y From the view of Islamic law, writes Umar Chapra, a leading economist in Saudi Arabia, “while economic growth is essential, it is not sufficient for attaining real human well-being.” Rather, we depend on “spiritual health at the core of human consciousness, and justice and fair play at all levels of human interaction.” Much more than a business model for specialty banks, he and many others believe that Islamic economics offers a much wider visio…
Read More…s. GreenFaith did its daily broadcast, once again targeting the bad guy of Saudi Arabia and wondering how they had spent their Sunday. They did not appear to have a brunch invitation. I walked by a totally dark Chinese embassy, which, nonetheless, had enormous security, and a totally lit French Assembly. They were working there. I also made the visit I didn’t want to make to Place Republique, knowing that it would be like things were after 9/11. M…
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…hief of staff and closest advisor, Huma Abedin, an Indian Muslim raised in Saudi Arabia. The sources of threat and emasculation sit at the table. Insidious workings are afoot. Trump is the political master of conspiracy theories, of infiltration and deceit, imagining amazing things such as the Chinese invention of global warming to undercut American production. Right-wing religious, too, tend to look behind the surface flux for both divine and nef…
Read More…e synagogue in Alexandria, Va., is “the protocols of the learned elders of Saudi Arabia.” Rabbi Moline, named by Newsweek this year as one of the country’s top 25 pulpit rabbis, added, “The integrity of our own Jewish community requires that people speak up critically” about the film. Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, American Jewry’s official umbrella group for domestic issues, termed the content of “Obs…
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…just my young friend, but other fabulous Muslim women from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. I am still surprised how much the image of the oppressed Muslim woman as victim remains credible. Here is where I enter, but it will take me more than 1500 to 2000 words, so I’ll be back, you can count on it. Let me start with the definition of feminism that I am most comfortable with: feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings. Then, let…
Read More…t if he were president, he’d be happy to see all homosexuals sent to Saudi Arabia. Santorum wants the end times and the return of Jesus, so others must as well. If there’s something that he can latch on to, like the idea of the Mahdi, then he will. He’ll tell you killing gays is bad when other people do it, but he doesn’t denounce it directly or disavow it himself. And really, Santorum is supposed to be Catholic, but he seems not to understand bas…
Read More…agnitsky Act, Secretary of State Pompeo recently named 17 individuals from Saudi Arabia implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This means any assets or business interests they have in the United States may be frozen. The Global Magnitsky Act could be invoked to sanction Stepan Tkach, Dmitry Asmolov and Sergey Bogodelov, the investigators and torturers working for the Investigative Committee of Russia who mistreated the Witnesses—i…
Read More…round the world. At the same time, Arabs and South Asians began to work in Saudi Arabia in huge numbers and brought a new and more conservative understanding of Islam back to their home countries. Combine this with the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 and we have a significant percentage of the Muslim majority world experiencing this moment. – In view of these last two points, it is interesting to read the many threads that make the argument along the…
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…Rights Watch has consistently criticized in countries as diverse as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Nigeria, among others. International human rights law supports the principle that everyone should be able form a family as he or she sees fit. Guatemala: Evangelical leaders back ban on marriage equality, prison sentences for abortion Legislation banning same-sex couples from getting married was introduced in Guatemala; the bill would also imprison…
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