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Enlightenment’s Islam: A “Necessary Fiction”

By Rob Goodman

…ishop who broke away from the Church. While the 17th century saw the first European versions of the Quran, one of its first translators wrote it off as “so manifest a forgery.” And when the preachers of the day turned to Islam, it was as an object lesson in the vices of the infidel—or occasionally, by way of analogy, the vices of the Catholic or Protestant, depending on who was doing the preaching. Popular sermon titles of the day included “Of the…

Jesus, Santa, and Now Sound of Music‘s Mother Abbess?

By Shannen Dee Williams

…ntinue to serve) in the Americas and Africa, the presence of black nuns in European convents is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, one of the first documented black nuns in Europe was Louise Marie-Therese, the famed Black Nun of Moret, who took the religious habit in 1695 and remained at Benedictine abbey at Moret-sur-Loing in France until her death in 1732. Kidnapped off the coast of present-day Ghana and sold into Spanish slavery as a child aroun…

Global LGBT Recap:Culture War Exports, Mob Violence and Kidnapping as Weapon of Homophobia

By Peter Montgomery

…pean Law Criminalizing Homosexuality Repealed Thirty-three years after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that laws criminalizing homosexuality violate the European Human Rights Convention, lawmakers in Northern Cyprus abolished the last such law in Europe. Lithuania: Push for Ban on Adoption In Lithuania, one of the countries in which American evangelicals have encouraged the adoption of anti-gay legislation, legislator Petras Gražulis draf…

Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hes. European Parliament Approves ‘Roadmap’ on LGBT Equality This week the European Parliament adopted a controversial report calling on the EU to adopt a “roadmap” plan for challenging “homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.” In a press release, Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe, said: “Today’s vote is particularly important as the religious extremists, anti-choice an…

Ugandan Anti-Gay Fallout: New Laws, New Violence, New Underground Railroad

By Peter Montgomery

…t last year, a former civil registrar from Islington lost an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Christina Odone, former editor of The Catholic Herald, argues in the Telegraph that religious believers receive fewer protections from the government: “Sexual preference and gender equality are taken seriously: laws and a host of employment regulations protect these rights with a convert’s fervour. A schoolboy who calls another one ‘gay’ as a…

Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

By Peter Montgomery

…n, who has warned LGBT people against becoming “provocative,” and with any number of European populists who promise a return to a mythical “traditional” past. Gessen notes that a year ago she wrote that she believed Trump would target the LGBT community ”because its acceptance is the most clear and drastic social change in America of the last decade, so an antigay campaign would capture the desire to return to a time in which Trump’s constituency…

Conservative Bishops Still Mad at Pope; Oligarch Launches Orthodox Network; Yoga Won’t Change Sexuality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to promote dialogue with the Islamic world, has published an interview with South African Imam Muhsin Hendricks, in which Hendricks discusses his struggles to reconcile his faith and sexuality and his approach to interpreting the Koran. Italy: Rome Mayor May Take Marriage to European Court We have previously reported on efforts by the national government to shut down actions taken by several mayors to register the marriages of same-sex couples who…

Marriage equality comes to Slovenia, continues to spread in Mexico; Civil Union legislation approved in Sicily, debated in Peru; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Montessori nursery’s equality rules, claiming that in doing so it breached European law. The British government asked a number of countries and all 50 U.S. states to clarify whether the jurisdictions recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who wed in the United Kingdom. Equalities Minister Jo Swinson told the Guardian, “One of the things we committed to do in the coalition agreement is recognising that for gay people who are in a civil partner…

An American Muslim Responds to Muslim Orgs Questioning Armenian Genocide

By Haroon Moghul

…damage of our own strikes? The Armenians did not cause the tragedies that European Muslims suffered at the hands of Christian European states, and should not be held hostage to them. From Romania and Bulgaria to the Caucasus, entire communities were forcibly uprooted, killed, expelled, or forced to transform themselves, in a long, slow, bloody march against Ottoman Muslims. Fearing for their lives in Anatolia, some Ottomans believed the only hope…

How Can You Exclude The NAACP and Liberal Protestants from Human Rights History?

By Austin Dacey

…Nations . . . deserve most scrutiny” to the exclusion of “broader culture and ideology, in which Christianity loomed largest in early human rights discourse.” Where I come from, that’s called begging the question. Transwar European intellectual culture may be pivotal to understanding the rise of dignity and rights in European constitutions, but whether it is pivotal to the overall story of human rights is precisely what remains to be seen….