Religion Dispatches
…commodities of one’s ongoing business. For example, a car salesperson that deals in thousands of car sales annually might have no less than 100 cars at any one time, but that is not taxed. They say the rationale here is that Islam encourages investment. It is also about avoiding hoarding. Sorry, Mr. McDuck, you’d have to pay hefty just because you like to sit on your gold. The Qur’an describes those who receive this amount: the traveler (which in…
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…ped within the constraints of a larger systemic corruption. Franzen’s work deals directly with this systemic corruption and in a way that is both hilarious and highly indignant. Salvation History One also has to wonder how a reviewer might claim that there’s no religion, nothing about the business world, no ethnicity, and no military service. These subjects ripple right through Freedom, though not in un-ironic ways. If anything, for example, Walte…
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…voters so often moved by appeals to religion? What’s in a Wall? The best answer I know rests on the very word “wall” and all its metaphoric meanings, as explored so insightfully by Robert Wuthnow in his analysis of “The Spirituality of Dwelling.” (It’s chapter two of his book, After Heaven.) Though the chapter deals overtly with American religious life in the 1950s, I find it a useful key to unlock the paradoxes that arise whenever religion…
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…rtable relations to the state. Here, and not in shopping malls or business deals, did I find Islam. In the modest ambitions and deep reservoirs of spirituality that are translated into poetry, art, etiquette, praise, music—and community. When I’d met with some of the protesters near Taksim, angry at a ridiculously heavy-handed police response, they talked angrily about Erdogan’s divisive politics and rhetoric. Did you know he was going to name Ist…
Read More…d months, starting with Ramadan, there are global tawjid contests with the best reader awarded recognition. You’ll be pleased to note that female readers from Indonesia are amongst the stars of recitation in these contests. Imagine that. When I say that anyone can learn, Arabic is the most consistent of languages such that learning to pronounce is really a very simple, even rote, process. One can read and read well without knowing a single word of…
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…ld reporters in an exchange broadcast on CNN Friday morning that “this all deals with women’s health” and that other issues had been resolved. “It has everything to do with ideology on that other side of the Capitol,” he said. So Democrats didn’t cite abortion funds, did they? No, they cited Planned Parenthood funding, and women’s health, but not abortion funds. That’s because the federal government does not fund abortions. See the Hyde Amendment,…
Read More…without actually relating to local interpreters, or else the outside actor deals with the ‘usual suspects.’ Those usual suspects are often drawn from an elite who are local but inevitably drawn from the same cloth as the Westerner in education, outlook, or both. The Westerner then comes to Cairo, or Damascus, or Doha, or Casablanca, meets with ‘exotic Arabs’ (who are almost as exotic to the local population as the Westerners), is given a rather sk…
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…ry wedding industry—have conspired to turn weddings into bigger and bigger deals, religiously and otherwise. Add the ongoing political and religious battles over same-sex marriage and the many-tiered wedding cake of public discourse begins to teeter precipitously. Any Bride Can Be a Princess A royal wedding, as anyone not living under a foreclosed rock has noticed, is an especially big deal. For a people so proud of democracy, Americans love princ…
Read More…ther the story about Gingrich and Clinton smoking and drinking and cutting deals to avoid scrutiny for their affairs—shows just how deep animosity to Gingrich is in the conservative movement, and particularly among Christian right elites he has targeted with his newfound faux piety. They have not just objections to his patently unkosher personal life (something they may forgive with proper contrition) but his blatant self-interest. His downward-sp…
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…in the church but are unwilling to say so publicly for fear of losing book deals, financial support and other trappings of what former fundamentalist Frank Schaeffer calls the “professional Christian.” As Bakker asked, “Are we not supposed to sacrifice for each other?” We are not talking about sex. We are talking about families and children. I wish pastors would not say they work on “social justice” when they don’t mean it for everyone. The real c…
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