Religion Dispatches
I, like many others, have found myself unable to turn away from the Arab revolutions. As a strong believer in the egalitarian nature of the Muslim religion, and a fervent critic of common assumptions that are held about Arabs and Muslims, these revelations were a welcome confirmation of my…
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Along comes Jersey Shore with its cast of self-described Italians. These are not the magical white folks of world-conquering, democracy-building myth-but they’re still “white”. They behave like the Museum assumes only people of my color behaved. The sum total of their television life is a kind of late-capitalist tragic anthropology: doing laundry to go to parties, in order to have sex. For me, it’s been tremendously liberating to know that people of my color and faith are not the only people who are embarrassing to watch on television.
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It is easy to blame the war machine or the pornography industry, but the more mundane problem is with our addiction to visual thrills. What some people see as a lack of moral vision (watching a porn video, for example) is perhaps better approached as an amoral astigmatism, a lazy eye, a privileging of the visual over our other evolved senses. The thrill of watching may mingle with compassion for those being harmed, but unless you as a viewer do something to actually alleviate that suffering, you are only a voyeuristic addict, entranced by the power of the gaze.
Read MoreAn epic choke on foreign policy knowledge—and that of his own base.
Read MoreIt’s far more meaningful to ask who is interpreting Shari’ah; think of the argument over ‘what the bible says’ and you begin to get an idea.
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If we read the Arab Spring as a zero-sum game between Islamists and secularists, we’re going to miss what’s happening; if we imagine Arab democracy will look like secular Western democracy, we will likely be disappointed. And if we assume reference to Islam and democracy reveals only hypocrisy, insincerity, or ideological confusion, we’re likely to be surprised.
Read MoreRD contributor Haroon Moghul examines media portrayals of the role of Islam in the two North African nations.
Read MoreIt’s your duty as a Muslim to rebel.
Read MoreHow does it fit the Christian apocalyptic narrative of Gog and Magog?
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