Religion Dispatches
…r, DynCorp, were found in 2000 to have been organizing a child sex ring in Bosnia.) Freedom to fire at will, the statements suggest, mixes in Blackwater’s culture with experiments in sexual liberation. Battle for the Defense of Christendom John Doe #2’s testimony makes particularly troubling claims about more cosmic aspects of Prince’s leadership at Blackwater. Prince, he alleges, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Musl…
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…or a Sunni in Yemen, to remain unaffected by sectarian rhetoric, given how important religious language is, and how persuasive it is for many in the region. Political Islam has led largely to dead-ends or to new forms of despotism. The choice is not between imposed religion and enforced secularity, but between the kinds of beliefs that lead to decay and despair, and the kinds that lead to thriving and diverse societies. History suggests it is pos…
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…ven when we memorialize recent and catastrophic events like the Holocaust, Bosnia, or Rwanda, it is with a shake of our heads and the wonder that people could let this happen. It helps us to think we are neither the perpetrators nor victims of genocide, and we never will be. Yet, as the Rohingya are being cleansed from their ancestral land, as Syrian children are washed up like refuse on beaches, we still do not acknowledge the lesson that it take…
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…its people and places. Jolie used regional actors, and the dialogue is in Bosnian. Hungary, where the film was shot, is a near approximation of Bosnia, though it subtly lacks in local color and feel (too much Austro-Hungarian and not enough Ottoman). But it is the intention here that matters, and such quibbles are minor. The bigger problem is that Blood and Honey seems to be several movies, few of which fit together, or even know what to do with…
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…ceptance of Osama bin Laden’s invitation to reignite the medieval holy war between Islam and the Christian West. While the violence is similar, any similarity is tactical, not substantive. The instances Breivik approvingly cites (say, the war in Bosnia) pre-date al Qaeda’s prominence by years. To try to construct a chronology of responsibility is not going to clarify the reasons for this massacre; or give us ideas on how to prevent it. The reason…
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…ss as regional actors and more as epitomizing the developing relationships between elements of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, the Christian Right (as epitomized by Project Blitz), militant antiabortionism, and the insurrectionary Patriot Movement—from Washington State to Washington, DC. It’s a movement that’s always been with us to varying degrees, but it is arguably broader and deeper than at any point in modern history. Far outside o…
Read More…re was John Paul II’s plea that Muslim women raped during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzgovina should carry those pregnancies to term and turn those rapes into “acts of love.” It is especially in situations of war and massive displacement that girls are subjected to rape. And, not only do religious views on abortion result in abortion denied, US foreign policy contributes to their suffering. According to Save the Children, 80% of war rape victims ar…
Read More…d by uncodified Muslim Sharia law, which criminalises same-sex sexual acts between both men and between women. For men, the punishment is banishment for nine months to one year or a whipping of 10 to 30 strokes, while the punishment for women is house arrest for nine months to one year.” According to Stewart, the country rejected international recommendations to improve its treatment of LGBTI people expressed in its 2010 and 2015 U.N. Universal Pe…
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…o women. There is also a bill in Parliament to revise the current criminal code, which was basically translated from the Dutch criminal code. The latest version apparently does have a sodomy article. So we actually face the criminalization of homosexual acts.” Somoa: Prime Minister Says ‘Christian Country’ Will Never OK Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage Prime Minister Tuilaepa Seilele Malielegaoi said in a radio interview that Samoa is a Christian count…
Read More…e original ruling by the judge stated that satire in its own right did not promote enmity between groups. In fact, satire of religious actions and beliefs right is a long tradition in India. The 11th century Kashmiri Sanskrit poet Kshemendra, in works such as Samaya Matrika, Kalavilasa, and Narmamala, satirizes brahminical and Buddhist norms with rapier wit. (Kshemendra, by the way, also wrote serious devotional and poetic works.) My colleagues in…
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