Religion Dispatches
…those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, in the oceans and beaches, in the marshes and ecosystems, and in our communities. We have been slow, too slow by far, to realize th…
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…. For the Malikis in North Africa and the Hanbalis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, ensoulment occurs at day 40, with abortions allowed up to that time. On the basis of Qur’an 2:233, which states that the mother should not be made to suffer on account of the child, many Muslim jurists allow abortion even after the period of ensoulment, particularly if the life of the mother is threatened, since the life of the already living mother is viewed to h…
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…legation whose itinerary includes Germany, Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Niger. As Jeff Sharlet has reported, Inhofe has long been the liaison between the secretive evangelical group the Family (aka the Fellowship), and Museveni. Sharlet has also reported that Inhofe ushered David Bahati, author of the anti-gay bill, into the group. Is this a U.S. taxpayer-funded mission trip for Inhofe? Lavers reports, by the way, that the U.S. law…
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…nts, in turn, are revealed to be a UAE sheik in charge of security for the Emirates and (wait for it) China. Some measure of useful exposition follows. The filmmakers want us to understand that the thing many Arab states and China fear most is instability created by food shortages. The African continent encompasses something like 50-60 percent of “undeveloped” arable land, making it the obvious target of a new scramble for Africa that echoes the o…
Read More…er: “Mrs Lam has no intention to push for same-sex marriages.” United Arab Emirates: Singaporeans detained, deported for gender expression Human Rights Watch denounced the arrest, conviction, and sentencing of two Singaporean nationals “for attempting to resemble women.” The two, a cisgender male fashion photographer and a transgender woman were deported after spending three weeks in custody. Mexico: Puebla legislators resist court ruling on marri…
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…ural tensions when living in an “Islamic” context, that of the United Arab Emirates. I’ve spent over a year hanging out and talking to people at a social club for Westerners and conducted interviews of mostly white British and American expatriates. Central themes emerging in this project so far include how white migrants from Europe and America construct and maintain a pan-Western white identity within a highly multicultural Arab society, as well…
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…l donors pledged $854 million in aid to the United States. The United Arab Emirates promised cash and oil. Cuba offered to send 1,100 doctors. Italy sent medical supplies. So far so good. The United States did not accept the vast majority of the aid offered, however. Although New Orleans faced huge infrastructure rebuilding costs, officials did not use many of the offered funds because of bureaucratic hurdles and general inefficiency and confusion…
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…In their paper, Ho and his coauthors write that “visitors may decrease the number of incense sticks burned and period of stay at temples.” In my travels, I did visit temples that tried to suggest limits on how many incense sticks people should burn. Some temples have tried to deal with this problem by extinguishing incense sticks after they have been burning for a while. Particularly in Hong Kong, I sometimes saw large buckets of water standing ne…
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…on subsequently blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.” Exactly. 2) “Muslims … use cell phones and computers without necessarily seeing a conflict between their religious faith and the rationalist, secular mindset that made modern technology possible.” Driving on an interstate highway? You can probably thank the Nazis for that. What about nuclear power, radioactive isotopes, etc.? Guess who got us started there. First…
Read More…much of their business comes from countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen that have very different notions of free speech and the separation between church and state. It was thoughtless for the library to check the box marked “occult” when planning their Internet filtering policy, but what’s even more disturbing here is that something as central to a democratic society as which sites can be accessed in a public library have be…
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