Religion Dispatches
…ldly xenophobic Foreign Minister. Lieberman has advocated the execution of Arab members of parliament who dare to meet with leaders of Hamas. His McCarthyite allies call for citizens to swear loyalty oaths to the Jewish state; for restrictions on human-rights organizations, like the New Israel Fund; and for laws constricting freedom of expression. UPDATE: Also worth noting, via Rosenberg himself, that Phil Weiss has uncovered the use of the term “…
Read More
…tical freedom. Even Salafis escape easy characterization. America’s oldest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, which implements and exports the type of Salafi Islam we’re so alarmed by. So what kinds of Salafis can we live with, and who would we prefer to live without? Salafis in Egypt are hard to pin down, too. Does their conservative theology make them politically dangerous, or politically irrelevant? Today, we’d guess the former. But prior to January 25…
Read More
…to take a strong stand.” Gutless European leaders (as well as many in the United States) imposed an arms embargo that crippled the defensive capacities of the war’s primary victims. It was not until the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed over three days, that the international community was pushed into action. We are coming up on the 17th anniversary of that attack, and already there is concern t…
Read More…A rejected that measure, citing concerns that “divestment would cause irreparable harm to Jewish-Christian relations.” This was the right result. First, let’s be clear that divestment would be a purely symbolic act. It would have little economic impact, and would, instead, be about sending a strong message of moral condemnation and outrage. What is that message? That Israel should be forced to change its policies by the international community. …
Read More…from a Mormon script. Daniel C. Peterson, professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University, editor in chief of the BYU Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, and author of the book Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East, said in an interview that growing up as a Mormon in California in the 1960s, most Latter-Day Saints were “very militantly pro-Israeli.” That stance…
Read More
…Eve.) This film was produced by a man who calls Islam a “cancer,” and was promoted by Terry Jones, who seems to best love undermining his country’s soldiers and diplomats time and again. Consider for a moment: How do we think this kind of film plays out in the minds of those to whom American foreign policy seems wrapped up in anti-Muslim sentiment? (Consider, for example, how the fate of Adnan Latif is read across the Atlantic.) Terry Jones, mind…
Read More…ur, Advocacy and Civic Engagement Coordinator for the National Network for Arab American Communities, about the anti-Muslim New York City subway ads, the threat of domestic terrorism, the “Innocence of Muslims” film, and Islamophobia in the presidential campaign. In the clip below, we discuss Newsweek’s “Muslim Rage” cover story, and how the magazine’s invitation to Twitter to use a #MuslimRage hashtage turned to mockery of Newsweek. What’s more,…
Read More
…outposts of the Anglican Communion—though less and less so in England, the United States, and other Western churches. A Rainbow Emerges from the Cloud of Whiteness In the West, Sentamu’s strident objections to women in the episcopate and LGBT persons pretty much anywhere in the Church as other but piteous sinners would be as profoundly alienating as it might be welcomed by Anglicans in more reliably conservative African, Asian, and Latin American…
Read More
…uslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al-Nahda in Tunisia Claim Victories in post-Arab Spring elections to establish new governments and constitutions. 5. Bahrain Continues to Crack Down on Dissent and peaceful protests, violate human rights, and issue extreme sentences on detainees. 6. Rise of Militants in Mali and Libya reflects the growing network of radical extremism operating in Africa. 7. The US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is Attacked—US Ambassad…
Read More
…“let’s have slavery.” No one is putting it forward as a sensible idea. The Arab uprisings came through Twitter, Facebook, and the internet. So if you put in all that, you should be able to estimate the future. I look at patterns and waves. I looked inside myself to work out why I was transvestite and what was going on. I didn’t come to any conclusions but I dumped guilt and shame. How to you reconcile believing in human goodness in this time of ge…
Read More