Religion Dispatches
This month, as reported by Reuters, the Egyptian government announced new measures to increase “supervision over all Egypt’s mosques so that they do not fall into the hands of extremists and the unqualified.” The removal of thousands of clerics—numbering 12,000, according to the government’s statement—comes in the context of the ongoing struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military-backed regime. Outside observers of this struggle may…
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…on the streets,” she adds. The lawyers have referred to Article 98 of the Egyptian Penal Code as justification for their demands of imprisoning the author. In an open statement to the Egyptian General Prosecutor, they called for the author to be tried for “contempt of the Christian religion and verbal abuse of Copts.” Naguib Gobrail, one of the lawyers and President of the Egyptian Human Rights Federation, has argued that “Muslims attack Christia…
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…n he sets out again on a Cretan vessel called Mars, and sets his sights on Egypt. In Egypt, the land of ancient wisdom, Jesus is reunited with Elihu and Salome, the two who had instructed his mother. He regales them with stories of his travels and his casual experiments with the wisdom traditions of the world; they are delighted to witness Jesus’ development (and also, one suspects, to see the superiority of their own teachings confirmed in him)….
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…omen’s ordination. In the hands of Promise Keepers, Galatians 3:28 took on new meanings. This past weekend, “slave nor free” was translated loosely as “the haves and the have-nots.” The reconciliation between the rich and poor didn’t play prominently, either in the event’s promos or at the stadium rally itself. PK did offer a “pay what you can afford” program to woo low-income rally-goers, and it also urged attendees to bring food donations for th…
Read More…Report are just a few of the blogs and websites referring to the events in Egypt as a sign of the end or — more ominously — the beginning of a new war. Conspiracy monger Glenn Beck has of course jumped with both feet into the fray, repeatedly referring in the last week to one of his favorite obscure books, “The Coming Insurrection.” Beck, without having to say anything religious, recites every end-time theme; fire, riots, Islam, Israel, you name i…
Read More…ation; and most of all, it existed in the innocent lives that were lost. Egypt now has a huge challenge in front of it—one that may well be larger than the one they have just overcome. The expectation on the part of many is that all of the problems of Egypt will now be solved—but disappointment will almost surely follow. Yet one hopes that the people of Egypt have shown themselves what is possible when people work together for a common good. They…
Read More…aders for themselves. Perhaps somewhere in those crowds are the seeds of a new political party, or people whose names will be known for decades to come – but so far, we have not seen them. But that does not mean that the regime does not have someone to talk to. They do – and those are the ‘wise-men’ who are, at this moment, negotiating with the government for an orderly transition. These wise men are some of the most well known names in Egyptian s…
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…llywood Censored. The code they designed became the Motion Picture Conduct Code, popularly know as the Hays Code after it was adopted by William Hays, a Presbyterian elder who was hired by the major studios to help clean up the industry’s image after it was rocked by a series of scandals. The code, says Black, “was a fascinating combination of Catholic theology, conservative politics and pop psychology—an amalgam that would control the content of…
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…und the world failing to hear the same message over and over again. Steven Newcomb, a Shawnee Indian, said it best in a column in Indian Country Today: What the hell were they thinking… the code name was based on an extension of the metaphor “Indians Are Enemies” to “Geronimo was a Terrorist,” thus perpetuating the US tradition of treating Indian nations and peoples as enemies. Maybe if the lessons of the Indian wars had been pondered before the m…
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…y has been jailed, beaten by inmates, and could face a life sentence in an Egyptian prison if found guilty of “promoting sexual deviancy” and other charges tied to her alleged crime: waving a rainbow flag at a concert. The 28-year-old denies waving the flag but is one of 57 people arrested so far in Egypt’s widest anti-gay crackdown yet, a swift zero-tolerance response to a rare show of public support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LG…
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