Monthly Archives: January 2010

God is my co-sniper

Afghanistan, Apocalypse Watch, Bible and Holy Land, Contemporary Art, Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue

Not since Tammy Faye Baker embroidered Bible verses on her underwear has there been as eye-opening a scriptural scandal as the recent revelation that an American manufacturer routinely engraves Bible verses on U.S. military gun sights. As reported earlier this week, the Michigan-based corporation Trijicon has supplied the gun sights used by American marines to aim at and shoot the Taliban and their sympathizers in Afghanistan. The company may now be in quite a few critics’ sights given the new publicity. The Wikipedia entry already details the controversy. But the main company website has nothing to say. In the detailed descriptions of the gun sights on the website the biblical abbreviations are nowhere in sight. But it does say that “Trijicon self-luminous night sights are proven to give shooters five times greater night fire accuracy- with the same speed as instinctive shooting.” Five times, got it? Try MARK 6:38 (do look this up) and don’t forget the fishes. It may very well be that the procurement officers never noticed the addition of gospel acronyms after the serial numbers, but the company is not shy about its Christian views: “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.”

The actual verses are not inscribed, only the chapter and verse in code. It appears that all of the verses are from the New Testament, so at least it cannot be claimed to be a Zionist plot (or perhaps it could be said to be a very clever Zionist plot…). I have no idea how many verses have appeared on the 800,000 units contracted for $660 million by the U.S. Marine Corps. I suspect that MATT 5:44 (do look it up) is not one of them. Perhaps the Sermon on the Mount is not part of what the company defines as “biblical standards.” Continue reading God is my co-sniper →

Greg Johnsen on al-Qaeda in Yemen

Terrorism Issue, Yemen

Welcome to Qaedastan
by Gregory D. Johnsen, , Foreign Policy, January/February, 2010

In 2010, Yemen will celebrate the 20th anniversary of national unification. But it won’t be much of a party: This could well be the year Yemen comes apart.

Even the brutal 1994 civil war failed to threaten the structural integrity of this country chronically teetering on the verge of disintegration as much as the current crises, all of which may be coming to a head in 2010.

Yemen has so many dire problems that it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Al Qaeda is growing in prominence, a Shiite rebellion is expanding in the north, and the threat of secession is renewed in the south. There’s a brewing fight over what comes after President Ali Abdullah Saleh, age 67, who has ruled Yemen for 31 years; the country’s elites are locked in a closed-door struggle to take power once he departs. Finally, and perhaps most intractably, Yemen is an environmental and resource catastrophe in the making. The country’s water table is nearly depleted from years of agricultural malpractice, and its oil reserves are rapidly dwindling. This comes just when unemployment is soaring and an explosive birthrate promises only more young, jobless citizens in the coming years. Continue reading Greg Johnsen on al-Qaeda in Yemen →

On Yemen (and some a bit off)

Anthropology/Sociology, Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Varisco interviewed about Yemen on MSNBC, January 16

For the past week or so, just before the terrible human tragedy in Haiti, Yemen was once again a front page news story in the Western media. This time it was not about qât, nor about the rhino horn used in Yemeni dagger hilts, but the issue was exotic nevertheless. Yemen is newsworthy because of the recent attempted suicide mission of a Nigerian who met with members of the relatively recently reframed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At first, the political talking heads were eager to brand Yemen as a lawless tribal haven for the next stop of our continuing war on terror. Joe Lieberman added Yemen to his own version of the axis of evil, which I have previously commented upon. But then late last week Yemeni officials announced that six al-Qaeda figures had been killed in an airstrike, and on Saturday three more had been arrested near the Saudi border.

On Saturday, on my return from delivering two lectures in Toronto, I went straight from the airport to MSNBC, where I was interviewed (if that term works for about two minutes of air time) about the recent strikes on al-Qaeda in Yemen. Earlier in the week, I sat down for an extended interview on the current situation in Yemen with Karla Schuster of Hofstra University, an interview which can be seen on Youtube. Continue reading On Yemen (and some a bit off) →

Following Seward’s Folly: #3 Confederates in Cairo

Egypt, Lithographs, Travel


Illustration of Cairo from Seward’s Travels (1873)

William H. Seward, the American Secretary of State who is forever linked with the “folly” of acquiring Alaska from the Russians, spent a year traveling around the world near the end of his life. In two previous posts I posted the comments he and his daughter made about India and Aden, but their trip continued up the Red Sea to Egypt. While in Cairo, Mr. Seward received the esteemed protocol of a traveling diplomat, but in Cairo there came a most civil surprise:

The Americans in Egypt are a mixed though interesting family. The Khédive is reorganizing his army on the Western system of evolution and tactics. Continue reading Following Seward’s Folly: #3 Confederates in Cairo →

How I Almost Became a Terrorist

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Islamophobia 101, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue


left, 1967 cover of Life Magazine; right, Dr. Alan Singer in the classroom

How I Almost Became a Terrorist
Not Everyone Who Opposes U.S. Policy is a Fanatic

By ALAN J. SINGER, CounterPunch via Maiz Centeotl Chicomecoatl, January 7, 2010

In May 1967 I was a seventeen-year old high school senior and a not particularly religious Jew. I was born in New York City, as were my parents, although my grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. My family strongly identified with the state of Israel and at the time my stepmother was visiting her brother who had emigrated there to fight for independence after serving in the U.S. army during World War II.

The survival of Israel as a Jewish state was important to my identity and the identity of my friends and family members. My friends, siblings, cousins, and I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust and we had family members who were murdered. Jews had been victims for two thousand years but the survival of Israel meant we would be victims no more.

As the crisis in the Middle East intensified Americans were evacuated. My father and I spent a night at Kennedy Airport waiting for my stepmother to return home. The next morning two friends and I went to the Jewish Agency to sign up to go to Israel as volunteers in the event of war. We hoped to fight but said we would do anything that was needed.

On June 5, 1967 Israel launched a preemptive strike. The Third Arab-Israeli War lasted six days and ended with a resounding Israeli victory. American volunteers were not needed so we never went. But we would have gone and we would have fought for the survival of Israel and of Jews, whether the United States government gave permission, looked the other way, or even if it tried to stop us.

I am no longer a Zionist and I have not supported Israeli policy, especially the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. I now see Israel as the aggressor in the region, but that is not the point. Continue reading How I Almost Became a Terrorist →

More on the Danish Cartoons

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Danish Cartoon Controversy

What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law
By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Religion Dispatches, January 7, 2010

Review of: Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood (University of California Press, 2009)

This very rich little book seems to me a very good place to begin the new decade. It is smart, informed, thoughtful, urgent—and properly unsettling. It is also very difficult to read quickly or to summarize in short order. It is well worth the effort.

The principal essays, by anthropologists Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood, take the Danish cartoon controversy as a starting point. They review the contexts of the publication of the satirical cartoons of Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, and the angry responses that ensued; they ask us to take seriously the fundamental incoherence of the assumptions about religion that underlie the dominant narratives of those events (dominant narratives that were repeated again this week in the stories about a recent attack on one of the cartoonists.) The book also includes an introduction by political scientist Wendy Brown and a response to the essays by philosopher Judith Butler. Continue reading More on the Danish Cartoons →

With Kitto Illustrating Bible History

Bible and Holy Land, Lithographs, Orientalism

As a child I spent many inquisitive hours leafing through the books in my grandmother’s parlor bookcase. One that especially attracted my attention was John Kitto’s An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible (Social Circle, Georgia: E. Nebhut, 1871). Rev. John Kitto, recognized on the title page as author of the London Pictorial Bible, the Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, ETC, ETC, retells the entire history of the Old and New Testament, from creation to the destruction of Jerusalem. Kitto was born into poverty in 1804 in Plymouth, England and due to an unfortunate accident ate age thirteen became entirely deaf and was forced into the poor house at the age of fifteen. This is quite an inauspicious beginning for a waif who went on to be a respected theological scholar. Through the local humanitarian efforts of several men in Plymouth, Kitto became a lay missionary to Malta and then for three and a half years in Baghdad. “While residing in that city,” writes Alvan Bond in the preface to Kitto’s book, Cairo “was visited by the plague, the terrific ravages of which swept off more than one-half the inhabitants in two months. Amidst this fearful desolation he remained calm and active at his post.” Once back in England he married and produced a travel account and several pictorial histories of the Holy Land. In 1844 the University of Giessen conferred upon him the degree of D.D. His ill health forced him to seek help in the spas of Germany, where he died after a mere half century in 1854. Continue reading With Kitto Illustrating Bible History →

Toronto Talks

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Folklore and Proverbs, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Texts, Orientalism

If you are reading this post today, Wednesday, I may very well be in the air on my way to Toronto, where I will be giving two lectures. Anyone who is interested is invited to attend.

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science presents:

Daniel Martin Varisco (Hofstra University)

Star Gazing through Religious Phrasing: The Origins of a Lunar Zodiac in Early Islamic Astronomy

At Ryerson University in ENG LG14, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church St. from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

One of the most important astronomical time-keeping calendars from the Arabian Peninsula is the so-called anwâ’, which early Muslim astronomers equated with the tradition of 28 lunar stations (manâzil al-qamar). Through a study of this calendar in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and Arabic lexical texts and by comparison to ethnographic accounts of existing Arabian star calendars, I argue that the system described in the evolving Islamic science of astronomy is one that did not arise in the Arabian Peninsula but was the result of cleansing the magical elements out of the earlier star lore and modeling this on the lunar zodiac of Sassanid Iran and India.


Refreshments will be served after the discussion.

The second talk will take place at the University of Toronto on Friday, January 15:

Anthropology Colloquium Series

Daniel Martin Varisco (Hofstra University)

The Culture Concept without a Textual Attitude: Reading against Orientalism and between the lines of Culture and Imperialism

Friday, January 15th, 2010. 2-4pm. Room 246.

Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, AP 246, 19 Russell St.

My paper for the University of Toronto is available online as a pdf.