Religion Dispatches
…t in following up their broader observations with a book devoted to the such. What’s your next book? My next book will return to the subject of my principal expertise, the Christianization of Egypt and the various social worlds in which Egyptian and Christian traditions were combined. I use anthropology and comparative approaches in this book too….
Read More
…the X-rated Egyptian myth of Set and Horus. As that story goes, Horus—the Egyptian sky god—contends with Set, god of chaos and the desert, for control of all of Egypt. The rivalry between the two gods, who are sometimes depicted as brothers, entails seduction, revenge, betrayal and a blush-inducing debate over who left his semen in whom to be settled by the other gods, including Isis, their mother. More recently in the “Angels and Monsters” episo…
Read More
…that high variations in fertility occur throughout the Muslim world; from Egypt to Morocco and Indonesia. Such analysis would attribute variation in fertility rates not to Islam, but to the specific cultural and political conditions within each locality. It is certainly true that immigrant communities often exhibit higher fertility rates than host populations overall. But over time these rates usually fall in line with those of the indigenous pop…
Read More
…; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33 – 34) Consensus could come around the need to deal with the immediate human crisis. There is a human reality right in front of our noses. There are thousands of children of undocmented immigrants who don’t sleep at night because they are afraid of losing their father or mother; other thousands have already lost their father o…
Read More…1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, Egypt. It states that abortion should not be promoted as a method of family planning. UNFPA fully subscribes to this and does not provide support for abortion services. It works to prevent abortion through family planning, and to help countries provide services for women suffering from the complications of unsafe abortion.” But that hasn’t stopped the religious right from a…
Read More
…rs of other minority faiths. Take for example, the Baha’i and the Copts of Egypt, who are relegated to second-class status; the Ahmadiyya Community, a large Muslim minority victimized by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws; or revisionist legal scholars like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, author of Islam and the Secular State. Their advocacy for equal treatment of the heterodox, if it succeeds, will improve the lot of unbelievers in the Muslim-majority countries…
Read More
…Israelites. Genesis 43:32 states that eating with Israelites is toevah for Egyptians. Gen. 43:34 states that shepherds are toevah to Egyptians—the sons of Israel are themselves shepherds. In Exodus 8:22, Moses describes Israelite sacrifices as being toevat mitzrayim (toevah of Egypt), although obviously Israelite ritual is not an objective “abomination.” If toevah means abomination, then eating with shepherds, eating with Israelites, and Israelite…
Read More
…that as the Israelites leave Egypt, they are repeatedly urged to repudiate Egyptian ways; i.e., to leave behind the ways of abusive power and excessive personal acquisition. They are instructed in ways of maintaining the commons and sharing God’s abundance. Initially they have no king. And when they finally acquire one, the idea of kingship remains the idea of serving and maintaining the commons. Kings who forget this are ipso facto unworthy of Da…
Read More…inciple, stories likes always put me in mind of scripture: But the king of Egypt said to them, ‘Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!’ Pharaoh continued, ‘Now they are more numerous than the people of the land and yet you want them to stop working!’ That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, as well as their supervisors, ‘You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks…
Read More…think we have law everywhere else, but this is the slippery slope between freedom to practice religion and freedom from government interference. The past few nights I have gone into this local mosque for the tarawih prayers and come out with out making any human contact. I think this is part of my preparation for hajj: how to perform the ritual requirements without invoking the politics of justice at every juncture. For example, in this mosque th…
Read More