Religion Dispatches
…o tourists, every few days, who’d ask: “which way’s north?” Or south, or east, or west. I’d smile, and turn south, and point out the World Trade Center. I’d tell them: Just keep an eye on that, and you’ll always know where to go. But there was just smoke, and it stole more and more of the sky, overcoming that beautiful September morning with a sick smell. If Eid ul-Fitr falls on the anniversary of that day, it will be an especially difficult task…
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…r we went to celebrate ion our favorite mosque and I looked up to see my sister standing behind the food table serving others. My sister’s death was all the more difficult because it came immediately upon the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about…
Read More…og didn’t move. Finally, I drifted to within three feet of him, yet he was still staring back at me, and still offering occasional croaks. That’s when I noticed the frog’s back end was missing, having disappeared inside the mouth of a really large black snake. The frog’s head and arms were all that remained unswallowed, a problem that clearly put the frog and snake at cross purposes. My first thought was to kick myself for leaving my cell phone be…
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…sque, when I went there for the tarawih prayer the night proceeding the first day of fasting. None of them have the same time on it. I therefore create a buffer to offset any slight disagreement a few minutes in the morning and a few at sunset. The rest I leave in trust to Allah. But 5:40 is way, way later than any of these, and I thought to myself how could I be so far off? I thought, hmm, well I better adjust my clock. I am getting up too early…
Read More…visit. Perhaps it is the deafening silence of being so removed from the hustle and bustle of the cities and even from my own family that makes me feel a bit melancholy. I should probably catch ride outside the gates of the estate where I can have bars for my cell phone and get in touch with them later today. Before the shaykh arrives, I continue with my Qur’an reading. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most o…
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…do specify room temperature, but stipulate only that the entire facility must stay between 68 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. (Licensed birth centers are intended for low-risk laboring women. They offer only three minor surgical procedures: episiotomy, laceration repair, and circumcision.) For all these reasons (the appearance of a double standard for abortion facilities; the speed with which the new regulations were handed down and compliance mandated…
Read More…e of them. Leaving home in my teens meant I would never live with my youngest sister like I had with the other siblings. By the time I started visiting my mom with my own children, my sister lived on her own. When my mom became ill and could not keep up the homestead, she went to live with my sister until her death. It was not long before my mother died that I finally came to live somewhat close—a two hour’s drive—to my extended family. Then it wa…
Read More…rategy that serves his own business interests. A recent profile in the Christian Post noted how the Faith and Freedom Coalition is housed right next door to Reed’s (and Phillips’) Century Strategies, and it has “the look and feel of a campaign headquarters.” “That’s what this is,” Marx told the Post. “Pure and simple.” It’s 2012’s version of the Christian Coalition: melding evangelicals with the tea party issues they’re already comfortable with, b…
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…ic service,” although they would not be obligated to do so. The Saturday posting states that an “informal kind of prayer, at the request of the couple, might be appropriate,” with “the assumption that any prayer will be accompanied by pastoral discussion of the church’s teaching and their reasons for departing from it.” India: Out LGBT people vulnerable under recriminalization BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder reports this week on the violent consequences o…
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…upshot is that the three flood zones intersect exactly where we live at East 10th Street and Avenue B. A part of me knew it was absurd to pin my sense of security to a digital map. First of all, I didn’t want to be looking at it in the first place. If we had lived on higher ground it would have been moot and I would not have made a religion out of understanding the distinctions between zones A, B, and C. But I was only staying in the East Vill…
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