Religion Dispatches
…alism. Sayyid Qutb, a hero of Osama bin Laden’s, was an early advocate. In Iraq, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the father-in-law of Muqtada, made important theoretical contributions on the Shia side of the movement. The fledgling Islamic banks in the United States have come under increasing official scrutiny since 9/11. But aside from the cadre of vigilantes whose sense of purpose depends on seeing a never-ending “Islamofacist” threat, observers agree t…
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…on), they again neglect to include the critical information that the group promotes itself as a “Christian activist organization” that attempts “to stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandate.” And while they identify Roeder as the author of articles for the Prayer and Action News, a publication that bills itself as “a trumpet call for the Armies of God to assemble,” which mixes “Politics and Religion the way our Founding Fathers Did,” it plays…
Read More…to observe rituals and pray. Many of the shrines central to Ashura are in Iraq, and their significance for Shi’ites means that sectarian tensions run high. This past week, a man (who reports earlier stated was a woman) blew himself up among Shi’a pilgrims at the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. Because of this, authorities have closed the shrine to women. Let me repeat that: because a man who everyone thought was a woman blew himself up at the sh…
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…d Jewish Congress. While the economic boost to the new Israeli economy was significant, Coates argues that the greater impact wasn’t economic: “Reparations could not make up for the murder perpetrated by the Nazis. But they did launch Germany’s reckoning with itself, and perhaps provided a road map for how a great civilization might make itself worthy of the name.” More than money The two cases, post-Holocaust Germany and post-slavery-and-segregat…
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…programs in the schools. Lots of them were involved in leading us into the Iraq catastrophe. They can never get enough military adventurism. Not bad, for what remains even now a quite tiny and fairly secretive network. Ferociously anti-Stalinist in their declared ideology, these folks will not hesitate to deploy Stalinoid tactics to achieve their ends. You gotta admire that in them—that steely resolve. Still, the question remains: Were they in fac…
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…es. After the first Gulf War, we did not encourage Enlightenment ideals in Iraq, we imposed sanctions and violence, directly and indirectly. That is the lesson that Iraqis learned from us; the Enlightenment realities of control and enforcement. It’s no wonder that we were not met with roses after the second Gulf War. The difficult conversation we need to be having concerns our true ideals. We can keep declaring that it’s about the Enlightenment, b…
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…, of any background or creed, could participate as equals. This was a very significant turn—I would venture, a Great Idea. It’s supposed to be impossible, by traditional accounts, to talk about religion with any kind of objectivity or pluralism or mutual respect. You’re either with me or against me. But, there it was: the highest court in the land was saying that, yes, this can be done, and it should be. And so religious studies came to pass, in p…
Read More…extending our debt ceiling”… Translation? We are going, in one fell swoop, to take on more debt without paying for a dollop of it than we have thus far doled out to fund the entire fiasco in Iraq. After all, when the numbers get this large, they become unreal. So what does it matter if we pass it off to tomorrow? More on that in my next column….
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…; the Gaza Strip remains under siege; the West Bank is even more occupied; Iraq teeters on the edge of anarchy; and Turkey has fallen under an authoritarian shadow. There are bright spots in the Muslim world, but a sense of ominousness is inescapable. It doesn’t just seem like the Arab Spring is over, but that the winter is here to stay. Should Trump and Putin translate their public flirtation into geopolicy, many more will die. Trump may very wel…
Read More…lam is the official religion under the country’s constitution, and Shariah codes have been enacted by state governments throughout the country. These laws are commonly used to arrest transwomen, and the Malaysian trans rights group Justice for Sisters has brought litigation seeking to stop these arrests. Malaysia’s ruling Islamist government has also used homophobia as a political tool, including repeatedly jailing opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim…
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