Religion Dispatches
…sudden—and very timely—disclosure of having been a Baptist since 2007 to any scrutiny. After all, if McCain is lying to the public as Pipes worries Obama may be, that would say something about his integrity as well. Mr. Pipes does not seem willing to consider the possibility that, having grown up in expatriate circles, in an interfaith family (not to mention with a non-practicing Muslim father), and in a society renowned in the rest of the Muslim…
Read More
…poke Aramaic but he knew Hebrew.” What’s surprising isn’t so much that Netanyahu used language politically to gain territory for his side—what defines his goals better?—as the fact that any attempt to pin this first-century Judean holy man down to one language ends up concealing him and his world from us. Hebrew as People First and Language Second Few sacred texts confuse monolingual thinkers as badly as the Gospels, where Hebrew and Aramaic seem…
Read More
…n expression of concern that it might serve to expiate the guilt felt by many young people in Germany. Since the 1980s, and the ascent of the Israeli Right and the coming to power of the Likud Party, Martin Buber has become the whipping boy of its intellectual class; his pacifist and humanist legacy has been mocked. Likewise, in India the Hindu Right and the BJP government of the late 1990s rejected M.K. Gandhi’s ideas. Gandhi remains an Indian na…
Read More
…t just a few—has deep religious roots. Recall that as the Israelites leave Egypt, they are repeatedly urged to repudiate Egyptian ways; i.e., to leave behind the ways of abusive power and excessive personal acquisition. They are instructed in ways of maintaining the commons and sharing God’s abundance. Initially they have no king. And when they finally acquire one, the idea of kingship remains the idea of serving and maintaining the commons. Kings…
Read More
…new—the peaceful ‘Shangri-La’ image of Tibetan monks belies a history of many armed struggles, often aimed at the “enemies of Buddhism.” Monks not only fought in the 1950s as members of the famed guerilla organization, Chushi Gangdruk (Four River and Six Ranges) against the People’s Liberation Army; some of the monks served as key commanders. More recently, a significant number of monks took part in the much-reported demonstrations against Chinese…
Read More
…There have been serious problems with the implementation, however, since many of the groups that get USAID funds themselves work with local (usually Christian) NGOs, thus shoring up the authority and resources of certain groups over others. The question is whether it is possible to do this better, or if the whole project is inherently flawed and unsalvageable. In addition, through the new office, the US is also likely to directly support groups th…
Read More
…a force of global religious identification. Christianity has done so for many years. Consider the undertone of sympathy in the Western media for the plight of minority Christian communities in Egypt or Syria today. Or, what of the French mandate that created the modern nation-state of Lebanon largely to protect its Christian population after the fall of the Ottoman Empire? Were the Russian Empire’s campaigns against the Ottomans into Georgia and A…
Read More
…n people their own territory after having suffered 400 years of bondage in Egypt. Although that territory was already occupied, God authorized his chosen people to invade, rape, pillage, massacre and even commit genocide against their Baal-worshipping Canaanite neighbors. But rarely do I read any commentary about this narrative of terrorism in the Bible when perusing critical articles on white Christian supremacy. It’s like decrying the increased…
Read More…considered a crime in Morocco. Article 489 of the penal code states that any one found guilty of carrying out “a deviant act with a person of the same sex” will be jailed for to up to three years. Last week three men accused of homosexuality were jailed to three years each. In March, Human Rights Watch called on Morocco to decriminalise homosexuality, saying that “criminalising consensual, adult homosexual conduct violates international human rig…
Read More
…ve, through silence and inaction, invited a plague of craven violence on a number of Muslim societies. In a manner of speaking, in many places, the asylum is in charge of the mosque. Religious leaders are more interested in cowing to public adulation through demagoguery than in showing courage and exhorting people to piety and sanity. Check if the sermon in the`Id al-Fitr (End of Fasting) sermon at your mosque hinted at the cowardly acts of al-Qae…
Read More