Religion Dispatches
…reating serious backlash among BYU students and faculty. Since then, Honor Code enforcement has been conducted through referrals—even third party referrals—of suspect students to a campus Honor Code office, a system of enforcement that has created significant opportunities for abuse. (When I was a BYU student, it was possible to make an anonymous third-party referral.) Honor Code enforcement on campus has been used to bait and target gays and libe…
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…ing his advice on how they might get involved in electoral politics in the new Egypt. They had no interest in going back to the old ways. Clearly the strident message of al Qaeda and the global jihadi movement is, as far as Egypt is concerned, a thing of the past. The old activists are organizing political parties, and the young firebrands are gathering in nonviolent protest. No one seems to be building terrorist bombs any more. This does not mean…
Read More…es and new terrains. What form will new life take? What is the nature of a new Egypt? Is it tall and strong? Does it have a mind of its own? What color will it be? Red, blue or green? Will it look different from what we expected? What developmental trajectory will the new Egypt carve for itself? What forces, old and new, will seek to shape it? Is the destiny of all nations the end-state of a liberal democracy? The Mexican “deprofessionalized” inte…
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…der refugees escape persecution in Russia’s Cechnya republic,” reports CTV News. In contrast, Radio New Zealand reports that gay men have been detained on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island after seeking asylum in Australia have been subjected to abuse and are now facing an uncertain future with Australian government plans to close the center before the end of October. Homosexuality is illegal in Papua New Guinea, but some detainees fear that returni…
Read More…ve—and Syria was dominated by a secular Ba’ath party. Yet, as I wrote, the New York Times, America’s leading newspaper, irresponsibly confused religiosity with a lack of receptivity to democracy. (Then again, if you’re the majority, of course you’d support democracy—a principled stand is sometimes a partisan stand.) Following the latest in the Egyptian military’s unprovoked assaults on civilian protesters, who reasonably enough are furious with th…
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…gacy of Shaykh Emad. A Malaysian friend wrote to me after she heard of the news, expressing her hope that Egypt would stand proud again. The only response I could give was: “Our pride is in the likes of people like Shaykh Emad Effat. His light is not extinguished; it only shines more brightly.” Another friend reminded me of a class Shaykh Emad once gave on a text by Bayjuri, a medieval theologian. At the end, he said that we did not visit the rest…
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…is one of Egypt’s most prominent Coptic Christians and the founder of the new, liberal Free Egyptians Party (FEP). In recent weeks, the altered Mickey and Minnie image had been widely circulated. An email with the title “This is the future of Egypt” had been bouncing around Cairo’s inboxes prior to its use by Sawiris. Kim Fox, a journalism professor at the American University of Cairo, believes that the uproar should be viewed in the context of o…
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…lections, Mohamed Sa’ad al-Katatni responded to fears that his party would promote an exclusivist vision of Egyptian society saying, “Our party is not a religious party, it’s a civil party… that seeks a modern and democratic state, but with an Islamic reference.” In the end, the real story of the revolutions of the Middle East is not one of an “Islamist takeover.” Rather it is the coming of age of a new Islamism that is working to participate in a…
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…onveniently, still record propaganda songs). It was a moment that took the new Trumpist version of the Lost Cause—i.e., the “Stolen Election,” which functions as the Trumpist “stab in the back” myth—to new theological heights, having remnants of the faithful coming together, honoring their martyrs, and vowing that vengeance shall be theirs. As Peter Manseau wrote: https://twitter.com/plmanseau/status/1639956453954928641?s=20 This wasn’t the only m…
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…en pursue in their edited volume, Conspiracy/Theory (Duke University Press, 2024). Their book engages the tensions and counterintuitive affinities between these two forms of worldmaking—theorized through the analytical framework of “conspiracy/theory”—across 17 diverse case studies. The Public Eye, Spring 2024 (Issue 109) examines the far-right expansion of authoritarianism globally. Inform your resistance: Subscribe now! PRA sat down with Wedeen…
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