03 December 2008
29 November 2008
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.
27 November 2008
25 November 2008
21 November 2008
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.
20 November 2008
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?
30 October 2008
The terrorist smear
Here, Sean Hannity proves why he and Fox News represent the lowest lows in American 'investigative' journalism. This one is just hilarious: "...the growing list of the presidential candidate's anti-Israeli supporters like Hamas and their influence on Obama's Middle East policy." Hamas influences Obama's ME talking points?! WTF?!
If you're going to use the "once a terrorist / associated with terrorists / knew families whose sons might have been terrorists depending on who you talk to, always a terrorist" line of reasoning, then at least be consistent. If you're going to rake Khalidi over the coals for having been close to some PLO-ers during the 1970s, then in the name of balance and objectivity, we probably need to look at the other side of the story.
Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel who signed the Camp David Accords and invaded Lebanon, was a leader in the Irgun, a Zionist militia in Palestine during the '30s and '40s and predecessor to the right wing Likud party of modern Israeli politics. The New York Times described Irgun as a "Jewish terrorist organization" in a 1947 article. Begin, who came to Palestine from Eastern Europe in 1942, assumed leadership of the organization, and took it in an increasingly anti-British direction.
Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to '84 and again from '86 to '92, was a card-carrying member of the LEHI, or the Stern Gang as the British called the group who assassinated the UN mediator to mandatory Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, and the British deputy minister of state for Middle East Affairs. The Stern broke from the Irgun after the latter advocated cooperation with the British against the Nazis; Stern leadership pledged their support to Germany during World War II in a bid to allow for increased Jewish immigration into Palestine.
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister from 2001 to '06, was also Defense Minister during Israel's excursion into Lebanon in the eighties. During his watch, Lebanese Maronite Christian militias overran two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. Sharon was found "personally responsible" by the official Israeli commission. In 2000, Sharon senselessly marched with a troop of 1,000 Israeli soldiers to the Temple Mount, declaring that it would never leave Israeli control; as a lifelong proponent of "Greater Israel," Sharon's provokation could be seen as an attempt to derail the Oslo process, which was more or less dead by that time anyways.
The foundational assumption behind the Obama-Khalidi-PLO-terrorist smear is that the PLO (and Hamas for that matter) are synonymous with Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency -- it's all the same jihadi terrorist violence with the same goal of a global Islamic caliphate and the same hatred for Jews and Americans. The flip side of that is that our allies are the bastions of freedom in the Middle East. McCain loved him some Musharraf, and look how that turned out. The Saudis have never made particularly good bedfellows either. And of course Israel can do nothing wrong -- you didn't need Hannity to remind you of that -- despite the fact that their country has been led by terrorists.
26 October 2008
22 October 2008
Theocracy
from the AP:
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin...expresses confidence that in spite of disheartening polls, "putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4."
...
Dobson asked whether Palin was discouraged by polls showing the GOP ticket behind.
"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder," Palin said. "And it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all."
...
"It is that intercession that is so needed and so greatly appreciated," Palin told Dobson. "And I can feel it too, Dr. Dobson. I can feel the power of prayer, and that strength that is provided through our prayer warriors across this nation."
She continued: "When we hear along the rope lines that people are interceding for us and praying for us, it's our reminder to do the same, to put this all in God's hands, to seek his perfect will for this nation, and to of course seek his wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the right track."
So what happens if McCain/Palin lose? Were Gov. Palin and another 1.5 million-ish evangelicals flat-out wrong? Did God screw up? Is Obama actually God's sovereign choice for 'getting this nation back on the right track?'
You know I hate rhetoric like this more than any other issue in the world. This is why I can't stand Oklahoma senators and Focus on the Family and every other agenda-toting Christian who rubber stamps "GOD'S WILL" on every goddam moment or issue to accrue political influence from their morally-superior high chair of epistomological certainty. Infuriating.
But this is just plain histarical. Tip - watch the glare on her glasses in the header picture when the page first loads.
Takes me back to 2004, when a certain middle school principle got on the morning announcements and called for God's / Geoge W. Bush's wills to be done in voting booths across the nation. Thy will was done, and look where it got us. Read more...
19 October 2008
The greenhorn's adventures in the news (III)
From the BBC this morning: "Unholy row threatens Holy Sepulcher"
The above photo shows the Deir al-Sultan monastery, run by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. If you're approaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the Via Dolorosa, you'll see the monastery right after the ninth station and the Queen Helen Coptic Orthodox Churh, the last before the CoHS.
This summer our group stopped at the monastery and talked with a couple of the monks, including these two pictured in a 2002 BBC article, "Holy War over Jerusalem Church." They claimed that the Ethiopians have been here since just after the death of Christ, though the most recent BBC article cites that date at 1808.
The two articles discuss the conflict between the Ethiopians and the Coptics regarding ownership of the monastery, made all the more poignant as the complex sits atop a roof of the CoHS badly in need of repair. I'm almost positive that the Copts are headquartered out of the aforementioned Queen Helen Church, from which you can access some of Jerusalem's largest underground cisterns. Here are a few relevant photos of mine:
View of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher from the Via Dolorosa, Ninth Station
Queen Helen Coptic Orthodox Church (Egyptian)
Stairwell leading to the cisterns, which were too dark to be photographed
Ninth Station, just outside the gate leading to the monastery and across from the Queen Helen
Roof of the Church, above the Armenian Chapel of St. Helena
Deir al-Sultan monastery
Entrance forbidden
Read more...
15 October 2008
14 October 2008
12 October 2008
Body of Lies was a decent enough spy thriller. But the King Abdullah mosque is not visible from every vantage point in Amman.
Read more...11 October 2008
Noor still in the news
From Counterpunch:
Muhannad is the perfect husband they all seek. A young Saudi woman told the Washington Post: "The couple express the romantic love we're missing in our culture. Even though it's exaggerated, it's good for men to see this kind of love, even if it's just on television." And women have begun to insist that their husbands follow Muhannad's example. Some men do recognise the challenge. A Yemeni taxi driver, Hamdan, 24 and married, says: "In our society men are superior to women but in the series concessions are made which allow a normal life." Nur defines how marriage should be approached.
Nurmania, and the infatuation of women for its handsome hero, creates tension in households which the Arab press reports eagerly. It gives a chance to write headlines like "Nur causes tension and divorce throughout the Arab world" and "Muhannad, the man women dream about - a cross-border troublemaker".
In Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, divorce cases are linked to the series. In Jordan, Nur was put on the agenda of parliament's education committee in an attempt to define a strategy against "non-Islamic culture". There is an urban legend that a Saudi woman paying her respects to a family in mourning asked where the TV was so that she would not miss that day's episode.
Read more...
06 October 2008
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