Religion Dispatches
…men armed with 1500 Abram Tanks which are America’s best. We sold them to Egypt along with hundreds of our latest and greatest fighter jets because Egypt was controlled by Mubarak who was America’s friend. Can you imagine what Israel faces with Iran, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Russia coming after them? The prophet Ezekiel clearly predicted this battle thousands of years ago and you are watching the players get into position with lightning speed. …
Read More…orrow we’ll trample you with our shoes!” And although “the bravest girl in Egypt” stands out with her brightly colored ensemble and resounding voice, she is not the only girl in Egypt taking a stand against a paternalistic regime in a patriarchic society. Aside from making a push strictly for political reform, these protests appear to bode well for the future of women within Egyptian civil society. To be sure, it was 27-year-old human resource s…
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…particular to African Americans. King’s tweet referenced the “Flight into Egypt” (Matthew 2:13) when the holy family were called to flee to Egypt to avoid the “massacre of the innocents” by King Herod. This scriptural reference has served as a prooftext that Jesus and his family were going to hide amongst “Black” people in Africa away from the fury of an infanticidal despot, hence King’s emphasis on “EGYPT” not Denmark (Europe). King is relying o…
Read More…stry of Social Solidarity threatens the very existence of civil society in Egypt. In the words of a July 9 statement issued by 29 independent civil society organizations—among them, all of the country’s leading human rights groups—the proposed law “will criminalize the operation of NGOs and subordinate them to the security establishment, shutting down the public sphere in Egypt to all but regime supporters.” This development supports the views of…
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…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…
Read More…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
Read More…s illustrative of the continuous deterioration of the overall situation of Egyptian human rights.” In Egyptian civil society, a political agenda has been observed behind the more frequent police roundups on the streets, at police checkpoints, or in clubs. On the one hand, this crusade is designed to illustrate a rehabilitated security apparatus, publicly excoriated by revolutionaries in 2011, and to demonstrate a newly re-established control and s…
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…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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…ice and a threat to Arab and Islamic culture. “Wahhabi attitudes spread to Egypt and took over a more enlightened, liberated Islam,” said Ahmed Hafez, an Egyptian analyst with the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, DC-based LGBT advocacy group. “Now the police in Egypt are targeting gay people to show the public that they are on the side of morality and are doing a good job in fighting debauchery, as a distraction to hide their failures in the c…
Read More…stians and to stand firm against extremists from all quarters. This is why Egyptians and non-Egyptians alike are launching in the coming days a new initiative called ‘TahrirSquared.Net’, that aims to increase common civil society actions in Egypt and the region – wherever the Tahrir Square effect of joining hands against disunity and injustice has been multiplied. It was multiplied in the ‘Today, I am a Muslim too’ rally that took place in New Yor…
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