Fuel crisis in Amman. From 7iber:
Having bought their fuel at a higher price and forced to sell at a new and reduced price, many stations have shut down in protest, while at least 17 others have gone bankrupt. Police forces have descended upon every gas station open for business to help allay any possible violent outbursts, while managing the long queues, some of which stretch for well over 1km.Read more...
"Laura Nasrallah Plumbs the 'Gossip Pages of Early Christian History'"
Dreams, prophecy, and visions are so often understood as irrational, embarrassing phenomena. Anthropologists and sociologists often say, "Well, that's what poor people or women do to act out or gain some sort of authority that's outside of the central forms of authority available in a given culture."
So I wanted to think about that, and in doing so, I realized that in antiquity, these are not at all peripheral phenomena. Everyone uses prophecies, visions, and dreams to talk about important political and epistemological issues. How do you know what you know? Can you gain this knowledge not only through education and study, but also through other means, like prophecy or visions? These may be methods that some of us today don't take seriously, but in antiquity they were actually central—while at the same time being incredibly contested.
My friend Omar al-Rikabi of the UofA Wesley Foundation writes for Jim Wallis' "God's Politics" blog every so often. His latest piece, "A Consistent Ethic of Life from the Unborn to Baghdad," seconds a few thoughts that I've tossed around here (though mine are significantly less eloquent), but his piece is brought home by the fact that Omar himself is half Iraqi and has family living there now.
That to say, Omar elicited a response in FrontPage Magazine, edited by the infamous David Horowitz, whose organization, the ostentatiously titled David Horowitz Freedom Center, sponsors my favorite holiday of the year, Islamofascism Awareness Week. The DHFC champions Islamophobia, masking bigotry and pro-Israel propaganda behind a thin veil of "terrorism awareness" and "exposing radical jihadist ideology" that just turns into polemical Islam-bashing (e.g., Obsession).
After reading Omar's writing, be sure to bounce around Horowitz's associated sites for some good laughs.
Studying Arabic in Mullins Library. On the same table as I rests a small unmarked volume, its pages coming apart at the binding. Open the cover to smell the browning paper. Buddhism and Buddhists in China, by Lewis Hodus, D.D., professor of Missions in China in the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford, Connecticut; published by the MacMillan Company in 1924; and authorized by The Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Part of a series entitled The World's Living Religions, "a series of concise yet reliable presentations of the actual religious life (gasp!) of the non-Christian peoples of today and of Christianity's approach to them." Included among the nine volumes in the series: Primitive Religion in Southeastern Asia, Islam and Its Followers, and Hinduism in the Life of India. But the best, bar none:
The Religion of Lower Races as Illustrated by the African Bantu
And who ever said that scientific racism, colonial imperialism, and Christian missions weren't bedfellows?
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