Religion Dispatches
…se things will not get done very efficiently. I was amazed when I lived in Egypt how government workers came to the offices several hours late each day of Ramadan, and then left for home and a nap several hours early. Obviously, you can’t have it both ways: up and about all night and then up and about all day. Something has to give. I guess they reason that since the fast prevents full force in the day, the night becomes full force. The offices ar…
Read More…ght on the Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday, and now Media Matters has a clip of Glenn Beck’s radio show today, in which he throws together Nazis, communists, Islamists, and — naturally — the Muslim Brotherhood. “We have evidence of the uber-left . . . sowing the seeds and helping those in Egypt,” said Beck. “You need to know the connections,” Beck warned. “This is about our survival.” “They’re operating like ACORN,” Beck said of the Muslim Brother…
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…Church sees in refugee families a reflection of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, and naturally is solicitous of the needs of immigrants. Reflecting on this image in a 1952 encyclical, Exsul Familia Nazarethena, Pope Pius XII wrote: In order that this example and these consoling thoughts would not grow dim but rather offer refugees and migrants a comfort in their trials, and foster Christian hope, the Church has to look after them with special car…
Read More…r plate to eat out of or off of are a minimal requirement. When I lived in Egypt, there was almost a second tier religious mandate to eat “ful mudamas” (fava beans) for suhur. The rationale was that it “lasted” longer in the stomach and I guess made you less hungry for the day long. Uh-Uh! This was NOT my cup of tea. I resorted to my good old American pastimes for the morning and accepted that in most cultures there is not a special breakfast food…
Read More…the equivalent of the cost of one full-course meal locally. I remember in Egypt that it was actually about 50 cents USD! In some places they still actually distribute it in food stuff — particularly rice, in Asia. I, like some Muslims, like to pay this amount directly to a family or individual in need. Others like to pay to local institutions, which in the U.S. would be the mosques or Islamic centers. The mosques then distribute to the members of…
Read More…ng what they eat? We deal with food all the time and continue the fast. In Egypt, I noticed this most pointedly. As a visitor to the country I was invited often to break fast with a family. I was also told to arrive in the afternoon. The women of the household would give me a sleeping caftan and put me in the bed. Literally. Meanwhile, they went on with the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, the children and their after-school work, whatever. I (…
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…t NYU’s first event of the year. We slipped into the dorms we couldn’t get signed into, and posted hundreds of cheap notices printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. We’d invited a prominent imam to speak and ordered a delicious dinner, convinced that the perpetually elastic undergraduate stomach would be the gateway to the soul. The next morning, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck, thousands were murdered, New York City went into lockdown, and…
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…in the room, even if it is purple. This week a young feminist Muslim from Egypt is visiting in the Bay Area under a program from the US Department of State, called an “exchange.” But they don’t exchange, she said, they only tell us and tell us and tell us—as if Muslim women are clean slates that need to be informed by the likes of the state department. But it’s not just my young friend, but other fabulous Muslim women from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia,…
Read More…The taskmasters were urgent, saying, ‘Complete your work, the same daily assignment as when you were given straw.’ And the supervisors of the Israelites, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and were asked, ‘Why did you not finish the required quantity of bricks yesterday and today, as you did before?’ Then the Israelite supervisors came to Pharaoh and cried, ‘Why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to you…
Read More…ng these lines not to give it a shot myself. One of them was a report that Egypt was second for online porn inquiries. I didn’t read all the details—like second to which country? Actually, I thought it would have been second to Pakistan, which I had read a similar report about some time ago. I know, you probably thought it would be some where in the Gulf, but it’s not. I’m not sure what that says (about you, or,) about the Gulf. Because then there…
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