Category Archives: Ethics

Discounting on Apocalypse

Apocalypse Watch, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Luke R. E. Publican


There is the real world which we see nightly on the news, even if filtered through journalistic hubris in which people are killed, maimed, maligned and the gamut of human interaction. Then there are the “prophets” who keep cropping (usually crapping) up with visions of impending doom. The recent prayer event that Rick Perry attended was organized by some of the most bizarre religionists in our country. As noted on yesterday’s Fresh Aire, some individuals are crusading a brand of “spiritual warfare” that comes close to the real thing. These include what most normal people, including the vast majority of Evangelical Christians, would call nut cases: charismatic preachers who claim visions from God, but somehow need more money to get the vision across.

I visited one of these “prophet” sites of a fellow named Sid Roth. He looks like the kind of guy who you would meet at a Jewish Community Center and his site is all about Jews, that is all about how to convert Jews to his version of Christianity. You have to wonder about a flashy website that has a banner declaring “It’s supernatural!” as a registered trademark. There is also that “Messianic Vision”, which is blind to what most Christians believe and certainly to just about everything rational in the world today. One thing that is all over the site is the “Donate Now” prompt. However, I do find it ironic that one of the DVDs for sale at a discount is entitled “Will America Survive 2011?” Is it being discounted so more people will buy and view it (which I somehow doubt as a financial move) or because thus far it is surviving and probably will, so why not try to unload the DVDs now. Indeed there are people stupid enough in our land that will buy this DVD after 2011, just as those who predict the end of the world (or think it already ended) always keep a few followers.

A short surf of some of the sites on the network of media prophets came up not only with Sid (I do wish he were a professional comedian with that first name) but with a Faisal Malick, a Muslim who converted to Christianity and now tries to convert Muslims with slick media programs. Continue reading Discounting on Apocalypse →

The Voting Gap

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality


Women in Jordan (top); women in Lichtenstein (bottom): Which country first allowed women to vote?

In every region, there are laws that discriminate against women, in relation to property, the family, employment and citizenship. Too often, justice institutions, including the police and the courts, deny women justice.
Progress of the World’s Women, UN Report

Much attention is paid to the disparate gender roles in Islamic countries, from blanket veiling of women to not being allowed to drive cars. Yes, there are cultural elements in a number of Muslim-majority countries that treat women unequally. But gender inequality is not specific to Islam or any single nation. The sad truth is that in 2011 the species of Homo sapiens has not yet evolved a universal sense of the equal worth of males and females. Theories abound as to why males tend to dominate and it would be premature to believe that males have always been on top in social interaction. I do not defend cultural practices, dressed in religious rhetoric, that discriminate against women (nor would I if they discriminated against men, which is so rare it seems absurd to mention it). But it is useful to remind ourselves in the secular West of the Gospel advice that we should not be so intent on dissing the mote in someone else’s eye when there is a beam in our own (I see no problem in reversing the mote and beam for the moral).

Take voting, for example. Exactly a century ago only two countries in the world allowed women to vote. Today, that right is almost universal. It is not yet a century since women received the right to vote in the United States. Continue reading The Voting Gap →

Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority

Conferences and Talks, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality


Call for Papers: Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority

A conference to be held at Boston University, March 31, 2012 

“The gender jihad is a struggle to establish gender justice in Muslim thought and praxis. At the simplest level, gender justice is gender mainstreaming – the inclusion of women in all aspects of Muslim practice, performance, policy construction, and in both political and religious leadership” Amina Wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad

Scholarship on female religious authority in Islam dates back at least to the 1970s and has gone through  several important phases. For two decades, most scholarship focused on demonstrating Muslim women’s poor social status and sought to locate the source of women’s oppression within religious doctrine. By the 1990s scholarship had turned to locate an egalitarian impulse within Islam that had been thwarted by the pressures of its patriarchal contexts. Over the next decade, female authored studies of the Qur’an claimed  an unimpeachable basis for female rights by holding up the Qur’anic ideal of equality as a standard by  which to judge social realities. More recently, scholars have sought to complicate the view of Muslim women’s unrelenting oppression. They have worked instead to recover evidence of past and present  female resistance and agency, demonstrating that Muslim women are carving out spheres of interpretive autonomy and successfully negotiating their public and private lives within the constraints of broader social structures.  This conference builds on the foundation of the foregoing work and aims to bring together considerations of religious, social, and interpretive authority across geographical and temporal boundaries. Continue reading Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority →

No dignity at Ground Zero

Ethics, Islam in America, Osama Bin Laden


by Mona Eltahawy, The Guardian, Tuesday 3 May 2011

I could hear the cheers as I got out of the taxi, two blocks away. I could hear them from right in front of Park 51, the site of a planned Islamic community centre and mosque that met ferocious opposition last year for being too close to the “hallowed ground” of Ground Zero. It was minutes after President Obama’s announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed, and I was heeding a friend’s suggestion that we – both Muslims – take candles and stand in vigil where the World Trade Centre stood before Bin Laden’s footsoldiers took it down.

So it was a shock to find hundreds of others had turned that hallowed ground into the scene of a home crowd celebrating an away victory they hadn’t attended, the roots of which they were probably not there to experience or were too young to remember.

There was always something sickening about tourists taking pictures of themselves posing in front of that big gaping hole called Ground Zero. “Me at site of mass slaughter, NYC” as holiday photo caption is wrong in every language, surely. It didn’t take 10 minutes for the frat party atmosphere to sicken me. Olympic-style chants of “USA! USA!” I could just about take as a freshly minted American, as of Friday. But “Fuck Osama! Ole ole ole!” crushed any ambition of dignity for the thousands killed, many of whom had jumped hundreds of storeys to their deaths, their bodies shattered to pieces close to where we stood. Continue reading No dignity at Ground Zero →

To hell with Bin Laden?

Ethics, Islamic Law, Islamic Rituals, Osama Bin Laden


For the past decade it has been “Where the hell is Bin Laden?” Now that he is dead at last, the tabloid mantra is “ROT IN HELL,” at least for the medium of unsubtleness known as the NY Daily News. In less than 24 hours after his James Bond style killing a website appeared on Facebook called Osama Bin Laden is Dead. As can be seen from the screen shot below, the insults of revenge are having their day.


I have no sympathy for Bin Laden, whose obstinate hatred has resulted in an extraordinary waste of life both among Muslims and non-Muslims, but wishing him to hell makes about as much sense as a loony in Florida burning the “Koran.” Continue reading To hell with Bin Laden? →

Pornographic War Gazing: Why We Don’t Look Away

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Libya


[This commentary was origially published in Religion Dispatches, April 12, 2011.]

When it comes to grabbing attention bad news is the best news. Whether selling war or natural disaster or a fugitive serial killer, the competitive edge goes to the media outlet that can scoop the most violence, brutality or sheer inhumanity in an event.

The most recent news cycle of political protests started out on a hopeful note. As the spirit of frustrated youthful protest spread at tweet speed to dictatorial regimes and elitist monarchies, journalists flocked to North Africa and the modern day Holy Land. Live coverage has shifted from country to country, depending in large part on where the most violence is erupting. Yet, as much as the story may be promoted as one of hope and liberation, the hook is all about devastation. Continue reading Pornographic War Gazing: Why We Don’t Look Away →

Racing from Dubai to Tripoli

"Arab Spring", Animals, Ethics, Libya, United Arab Emirates


Top: Victorie Pisa from Japan, ridden by Mirco Demuro, middle, crosses the finish line of $ 10,000,000 Dubai World Cup race, the world’s richest horse race, followed by 2nd place Transcend , right, from Japan and 3rd place Monterosso from Great Britain, 2nd right. (The Associated Press); bottom:Libyan rebels on top of a captured tank

As I write this, the media are reporting major advances of the Libyan resistance to Qaddafi, supported in large part by the surgical air strikes of the U.S. and NATO aircraft. Qaddafi has bunkered down, vowing to fight until his last drop of blood, but as the race to Tripoli proceeds, more and more defections from his military are inevitable. It is hard to predict when this will end. In general I think most ruthless dictators are cowards at heart, which is why they need such massive security to perpetuate their narcissistic hold on power. But Qaddafi is deluded enough to go down with guns blazing, like Errol Flynn in Custer’s Last Stand.


Debate over the wisdom of U.S. involvement in the Libyan no-fly-plus zone has reached a level of feverish political overtones. Obama’s opponents, those lock-step GOP stalwarts who never challenged Bush when we foolishly entered into a ground war in Iraq, now seem concerned about the costs of tomahawk missiles (I suspect those senators with large arms manufacturers in their home states are biting their tongues as they speak). Winging it, a la Bush, is the American way in their mind and damn what any other civilized nation thinks. Actually forging a coalition with U.N. and some Arab country backing is heralded as weakness. Much of the debate swirling between the talking security expert heads is really an end-around around the end-game criticism. Continue reading Racing from Dubai to Tripoli →