Religion Dispatches
…we find an investment advisor named Sean Hyman pushing “The Biblical Money Code,” which claims that advice “woven” into Scripture has helped him go from earning $15,000 to giving away up to $50,000 a year. Unlike Hovind, Hyman is giving away his system for free. All you have to do is sit through an hour-long video, during which Hyman explains how “to unlock vast amounts of wealth safely and ethically.” Fancy explanations are provided, but it’s act…
Read More
…ene, as the Egyptian authorities did in 2007 when they banned The Da Vinci Code. The Coptic community—which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 80 million citizens—had raised alarm and demanded that both the book and movie be banned. Now, three years on, Zeidan’s bestselling novel is is prompting angry demands from that same community. In early May a group of Coptic lawyers demanded that the government imprison the author for five year…
Read More
…ke away that free will, except for those who have the capacity to hack the code and reprogram the car. We normally think of robots as almost pure code, yet the scene last week when Graystone orders the Zoebot to rip off her arm raises some interesting stakes in this. It seems to me that people may be treating the Cylons differently depending on what mix of code and law they believe governs their behavior. And of course, those of you who study reli…
Read More…ther setback in the struggle for gay rights on the continent. Chad’s penal code is more than half a century old and does not explicitly mention homosexuality. But section 361 of a draft new code states the punishment for anyone who has sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex is 15 to 20 years in jail and a fine of 50,000-500,000 Central African francs (£60-£600), according to a document seen by Agence France-Presse. The cabinet claims that…
Read More…children for it,” Sommaruga said. Greece: Gay Syrian migrant to be sent to Turkey after asylum claim rejected “A gay Syrian migrant whose asylum claim was rejected by Greece will be sent back to Turkey,” reports AFP: The 46-year-old man arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos after the EU struck a deal to send some failed asylum seekers back to Turkey in a bid to stem the bloc’s worst ever migrant crisis. His application was rejected by Greek asylum…
Read More…it at a table, and eat his food with a knife and fork. But for the rest of his life, Rebbe Nahman could never be certain if he was a rabbi who had pretended to be a turkey, or a turkey pretending to be a rabbi. After all, maybe God wants turkeys. It’s difficult to say….
Read More
…out war, there’s a deep sense of being abandoned by the world. You were in Turkey during Israel’s war with Hamas. How did Turks and Syrians respond to this war? Was Iran’s support for Hamas a complicating factor for Syrians? As expected, there was strong support for Palestinians and simultaneous condemnation of Israeli actions. Many Syrians saw Israeli actions through the prism of their own conflict. It facilitated several conspiracy theories incl…
Read More
…no matter how the human institutions of religion closed in on them. *** No Turkey For Me: Confessions of an Indian Militant Reactionaries decry that activists have come for Confederate statues and for Columbus Day, but for the most part Thanksgiving seems to remain untouched. A cynic might note that neither of those aforementioned observances is associated with turkey and football, but whatever the reasons for why Thanksgiving endures while Columb…
Read More…ndits about the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and how it was leading Turkey down the wrong path. When I was in the country, however, I was struck instead by how much political ferment was going on, how the economy was booming, how once-forbidden topics were being discussed. Of course, the AKP is flawed in many, many ways. But the move away from Turkey’s militant—and military—secularism gave me pause. The second inspiration, if you can call i…
Read More…reets an official, who is making a hand gesture used to mock gay people in Turkey.” The case was brought against them after a reader complained the cartoon was against the country’s moral values. Lawyers representing President Erdogan pushed for a conviction for “insulting a public official”. The pair were facing 11 months in jail, but were spared based on good behaviour during the trial. They have been fined 7,000 Turkish lira (£1,830). Being gay…
Read More