All posts by dvarisco

5,000 Years and Counting, but which way?

Bible and Holy Land, Gender and Sexuality, Obama Administration


Brigham Young and his 21 wives

It should not be surprising that North Carolina’s Republican legislators have made it a state law that marriage is only between one man and one woman, but the rationale is a bit puzzling for one of the buckles of the Bible Belt. Here is Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council claiming that “We can’t think that we can tinker with the definition of marriage and say, it’s no longer between a man and a woman which 5,000 years of human history has shown.” What Bible has Tony Perkins been reading? Let’s assume that he also wants to set back the clock to Bishop Ussher’s number game that Adam and Eve were created in 4004 BC. If Adam only married Eve, which would be news to the legendary Lilith and make it really interesting to speculate where Seth got his wife, then why not push it back another millennium. The problem is that many of the Biblical Patriarchs were not aware of the one man/one woman rule. Certainly not Abraham or Jacob. David and Solomon were only two of the Israelite kings who had rather sizeable harems.

Throughout most history, whether in the orbit of Biblical myth or not, marriage has not been exclusively between one man and one woman. Continue reading 5,000 Years and Counting, but which way? →

Googling the End of the World

Apocalypse Watch, CyberOrient, Humor and Satire, Terrorism Issue

Here is a moral teaser: is Google good or evil? Google and its browser kindred have completely transformed the way we get information. It is the cyberspatial ouija board that few people could do without. I will be using it while writing this post, for example. Yesterday morning I was reading an article posted on the LA Times website about a new study published in Science that argues how “Thinking can undermine religious faith.” In the left margin of the webpage there are two Ads by Google. Both are prime examples of what the article is saying: that a lot of what goes by the name of religion is gut level rather than thought out.

I clicked on “The End-Time is Here” Google ad and discovered a website with a free pdf of 2008 God’s Final Witness by Ronald Weinland, who gives updates on the book in his blog. My first gut level thought was how strange it was that a book about the end of the world with the date 2008 should still be touted on a Google ad. But upon further thinking, by actually reading parts of the book, I discovered that the magic date is in fact May 27, 2008, less than three weeks from today. Here is the blurb that says it all:

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

On December 14, 2008, the First Trumpet of the Seventh Seal of the Book of Revelation sounded, which announced the beginning collapse of the economy of the United States and great destruction that will follow. The next three trumpets will result in the total collapse of the United States, and once the Fifth Trumpet sounds the world will be thrust into WW III.

Silly me; the world was not supposed to end in 2008, since that was just the economic meltdown that God chose to let us all know that in a short time he would pull another Flood and this time 6 billion people would die. Bad news for Romney, I suppose, since I doubt any Mormons will be in the 144,000 elect who will then rule the earth (and unless God intervenes there will be a lot of stinking dead bodies to bury). I am not sure what or who they will rule over, since only the really good people are being saved, but then look what a terrible thing Noah’s son Ham did to his drunken, naked father. and given that curse of Ham, is it any wonder that Obama will be denied a second term? I wonder if having a socialist in the Oval Office, not to mention that God must have known that France would also just elect another socialist and the Commie Putin would sweep to victory again, was the final straw for the great God Jehovah.

Regarding this new date, pre-Mayan it would seem, both my gut and thinking part of my brain are skeptical, but it is only fair to reproduce the argument here so you as an educated reader can decide for yourself. So take a look at this:

Continue reading Googling the End of the World →

The Real War on Women

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media


One of the most revered journals on the political front has taken a cue from Sports Illustrated: Foreign Policy now has a sex issue, indeed what is billed as “the sex issue.” Someone forgot to tell the editors that there is such a thing as “gender,” since there is very little bedroom-variety “sex” revealed in the articles. If a review of “Women in Politics” is about “sex,” then the journal misses out on the real sex going on, like politician John Edwards cavorting while running for President and several secret servicemen strip clubbing the night away in Columbia. And if what is going on from India to Iran is “the new politics of sex,” it looks a lot like the old. The reader might even accuse the journal of false advertising, since the seductive pose of a model clad in hijab black on the cover suggests more politically incorrect eye candy inside.

The lead article by the journalist Mona Eltahawy has launched a barrage of commentaries and counter commentaries in the academic community. Echoing the cover tag, she asks “Why do They Hate Us?” with a less than subtle subtitle of “The Real War on Women is in the Middle East.” Were this “really” the case, it might be seen as good news, since I have always been under the impression that the real war on women was more or less worldwide. How wonderful that women in Africa, Asia and Latin America no longer have to worry about real warfare. Of course, we all know the real war against women ended in Europe when the wielders of the Malleus Maleficarum burned the last witch and in the United States when women started voting in 1920. And I am sure the GOP is quite relieved to know that the war on women announced for the upcoming election is phony.

I understand the author’s frustration at the lack of progress for promoting women’s rights in the aftermath of the now rather chilly “Arab Spring.” Her experience in Tahrir of being groped and sexually assaulted is despicable. But to assume that those men stand for all Egyptian men and that all Egyptian women are hated is what one says in anger. The “real war” here is not about groping; it is a battle for minds, not bodies. The “real” enemy is a politics charged with a dogmatic rhetoric that is less about what men and women do in the bedroom than how they conform to an imposed tyranny that benefits the proverbial one percent, be they dictators or clerics. Continue reading The Real War on Women →

For Whom the Death Toll tolls

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Iraq, Iraq War, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


“John Donne and 1664 Dutch map of the world

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”
John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624

What was true some four centuries ago for the English metaphysical poet John Donne is timeless, even if his writ shows its linguistic age. Today it can also be said that no country is an island unto itself, no matter where or how you spin the globe. This is certainly the case for the United Sates, with our military still on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, targeted drones over Pakistan and Yemen, the smoldering aftermath of the bombs that brought down Qaddafi in Libya, the stench of made-in-the-USA arms just about everywhere. If, as Donne eloquently reflects, the death of any man (or woman or child) diminishes us, then why are we so hell-bent on adding to this diminishing by arming thugs and sending our military to die in other countries?

First, it is important to realize how much the death toll drones on daily. Take today, for example. On Al-Jazeera we learn there are “many dead in Afghanistan suicide blasts,” 18 dead and 45 wounded by the numbers. As the nominal peace part still fails to protect the dictator-weary people of Syria, reports are that some 9,000 have been killed so far by the Assad regime, including refugees over the border in Turkey. There are also “Pakistanis dead in apparent sectarian attack,“adding six more to the thousands who have been killed in the ongoing violence that plagues Pakistan. The see-saw fighting in Yemen’s troubled south leaves “Dozens killed in attack on Yemen army base.” And a few days ago “Hamas hangs three Gaza prisoners“. Continue reading For Whom the Death Toll tolls →

ASMEA: ASinine and MEAn

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Orientalism, Terrorism Issue


The primary international professional association of scholars who study the Middle East is MESA, the Middle East Studies Association. If you go to the main website, you will read:

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, non-profit, non-political learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world. From its inception in 1966 with 50 founding members, MESA has increased its membership to more than 3,000 and now serves as an umbrella organization for more than sixty institutional members and thirty-nine affiliated organizations. The association is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council of Area Studies Associations, and a member of the National Humanities Alliance.

Members of MESA receive two journals, the flagship International Journal of Middle East Studies and the revamped Review of Middle East Studies. Each year MESA holds an annual convention, this year in Denver. As noted, the association is non-political and contains members with widely divergent views on the controversial political and religious issues in the Middle East and North Africa.

So, why, you might wonder, is there a rival organization known as ASMEA, The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, with its own journal housed with Taylor and Francis? Ah, politics. The founding fathers of the association are Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who appear to have joined forces primarily because of a common distaste for the work of Edward Said and their unfailing attraction to the intelligence community. The welcome message suggests that ASMEA is filling a gap:

ASMEA is a new academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies, and related fields. It is a response to the mounting interest in these increasingly inter-related fields, and the absence of any single group addressing them in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary fashion.

Like MESA, it claims to be non-partisan, although it is hard to explain why having only one point of view constitutes being non-partisan. It is obvious that scholars, like everyone else, will have differing opinions about issues like Palestinian statehood, inflammatory religious rhetoric, gender and a variety of issues that call for better understanding through dialogue among scholars. But ASMEA is monologue on top of being superficially trite. The claims for the “highest standards of research” are laughable, given the contents of its journal. For example,the most recent issue contains one book review. The chosen book is Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World by Robin Wright. The author of the book is a reporter, well-traveled (140 countries and counting) and with a prolific presence on all the media. With due respect to the importance of journalism in a free society, Ms. Wright is not an academic scholar; nor has her book been published through the peer review vetting of an academic press. I am not concerned with the value of her book, but it is the kind of book that routinely gets reviewed in major media outlets and rarely in academic journals. Is this the only book that ASMEA could find worth reviewing? [Update: In my original post I misidentified Stephen A. Emerson as Stephen Emerson, an unabashed partisan who sees jihadist terror behind every Islamic-looking bush.] Continue reading ASMEA: ASinine and MEAn →

Varisco on WBEZ

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Journalism and Media, Yemen


I was interviewed yesterday on the “Worldview” Program of WBEZ, Chicago. To listen to the broadcast, click here.

Yemen’s new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has been in power nearly a month. He’s facing trouble in the southern province of Abyan. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the fighting has displaced more than 150,000 people since militants seized several cities in the province last May. Worldview will discuss the humanitarian crisis with Daniel Varisco, professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.

Sharing our values…

Anthropology/Sociology, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


This post is not about the value of journalism, but about the blind prejudice that infiltrates much journalistic writing about values. I am not talking about the caricature newscasting of a Fox News Geraldo Rivera, who thinks wearing a hoodie is a problem (just like some maintain that a woman wearing a miniskirt is asking for “it”). Rather it is the prize-touting expert-of-all-trades mentality of Thomas Friedman, whose talking-head status is, in journalistic terms, astronomical. Yesterday, Friedman posted a commentary in The New York Times entitled “A Festival of Lies.”

Friedman begins with a quote from the historian Victor Davis Hanson in The National Review:

“Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan. What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East — both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it.”

I certainly agree with Friedman’s gut reaction that “And that is why it’s time to rethink everything we’re doing out there. What the Middle East needs most from America today are modern schools and hard truths, and we haven’t found a way to offer either.” Bravo. Bombs make enemies and schools build friendships: this hardly seems like a new revelation, but it is the kind of truth spoken to power that needs to be voiced time and time again.

But it is what underlies the rationale where I find an all-too-familiar ritual of truths that carry along the heavy baggage of assumptions that belie the argument being made. Continue reading Sharing our values… →