Category Archives: Bible and Holy Land

Black Friday through Black Thursday over and over again

"Arab Spring", Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Syria


In the United States, after having given thanks for a turkey feast in which only one of the native birds has been officially pardoned and allowed to live a little longer, today becomes Black Friday. One official holiday (blessed by Lincoln, who is the star of a new Hollywood film) has ended and the shopping spree for the next official holiday (which officially keeps the “Christ” in Christmas) has begun. Actually in some places the shopping began last night. Whatever the real reason for the dubbing, it is obvious that this shop-to-you-drop mentality is meant to keep stores in the black rather than bleeding red. As a result, lots of gifts will be be bought to be placed under the Christmas trees of families who really do not need them. Meanwhile in the Middle East (and not just in the Middle East) Black Friday will be followed by a Black Saturday and the blackness will continue all the way through to a Black Thursday to be followed by yet another Black set of days on end.

In the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy I was without electricity in my home for 11 days. Apart from a few candles and flames in a fireplace, I was surrounded by darkness for more than a week. But there are different shades of darkness, despite the semantic homogenization in our concept of “black.” Being in the literal dark or in a situation where there is no light and thus everything is pitch black keeps us metaphorically in the dark as well. I lost power and a few tree limbs, but thousands of people during Sandy lost houses, possessions of all kinds, cars and boats. Some still remain without a home or power as I write this three weeks later. What makes today “Black Friday” here in America is inconvenience at the malls. It was inconvenient not to have electricity or hot showers and to cook on a Coleman stove for a few days, but the unfolding events in the Middle East go far beyond this kind of inconvenience. Continue reading Black Friday through Black Thursday over and over again →

If the devil is in the details, the Winner is?

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2012

In the last day before the rhetorically cataclysmic 2012 presidential election, pundits are playing (not really something that could be called work) around the clock to predict who will win tomorrow’s final tally. There is no question about the obvious fact that the United States is about as polarized as it has ever been. As both candidates shout out, the choice is clear. It is hard to imagine anyone who is still undecided; indeed, I think it is so unpatriotic not to have made up your mind that anyone still labeled “undecided” should not be eligible to vote. If turnout is anything like the last election (and most pundits think it will not be on either side), some 40% of the eligible voters will not bother to vote at all. Democracy is so taken for granted in this country that some of my fellow citizens are content to let others decide their fate. And given the untold millions of dollars fueling the propaganda machines, it would seem that the political system assumes the rest of the electorate can be bought by 30-second attack ads.

I write this post in my university office, since my home has not had electricity or Internet for over a week, due to the massive destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy. In my home town more than 50 cars are lined up overnight hoping for gas to be delivered to the local Hess station. But despite the brutal infrastructure damage, especially along the southern coast of Long Island, the death toll has been relatively low. All deaths are tragic, but meanwhile the death toll rises daily in Syria, bumped from the evening news in the New York Metropolitan Area. Camping out by my fireplace each night and setting up my Coleman stove, I really have nothing to complain about. In a sense the enforced rest, week off from teaching and catch-up on reading has been a pleasant, even if increasingly cold, experience. But tomorrow the real damage could be done if Gov. Romney is elected.

I have no crystal ball, but the odds certainly favor President Obama at this moment. No president is perfect, but in my mind Obama deserves re-election for a variety of reasons and Governor Romney does not for an even larger number of reasons. Let’s start with the no-end-in-sight “War on Terror” that many on the right in this country see mainly as a war with Islam. Romney’s previous comments on the Islamic faith show that he is only too eager to grovel before the Islamophobic right wing that paints Islam as inherently violent and Muhammad as a pedophile. The more people hate Islam, the more likely they are to vote for Romney. Romney has stoked this fear as well, in his “severely conservative” rightward leap during the Republican primaries. Not once has he said to the extremists and newly christened “teavangelicals” that their antagonism toward Muslims is wrong. Continue reading If the devil is in the details, the Winner is? →

Unequally yoked is no joke

Animals, Bible and Holy Land, camels, Islamic Sects, Palestine, Photography


Gelatine silver print (probably made in the mid-1920s) of an American Colony photograph taken in southern Palestine between 1898 and 1911; from the John Garstang collection

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?” 2 Corinthians 6:14, KJV

The admonition of the Apostle Paul in his second letter to Corinth is the ultimate justification for separatism. Orthodox Jews, Fundamentalist born-again Christians and ultra-conservative Muslims all have taken to heart the sentiment of this advice, often making it into an outright ban. The latest news sensation is about a Muslim “catacomb sect” in Russia’s Tatarstan region:

Four members of a breakaway Muslim sect in Russia’s Tatarstan region have been charged with cruelty against children for allegedly keeping them underground.

Police discovered 27 children and 38 adults living in catacomb-like cells in an eight-level underground bunker.

The sect’s elderly leader, Faizrakhman Sattarov, had reportedly wanted to build his own Islamic caliphate beneath the ground…

Officials said the children, aged between one and 17 years, had never left the compound, gone to school or been treated by a doctor, and had rarely seen the light of day.

According to the Russian website Islam News, Mr Sattarov, 83, declared himself an Islamic prophet in the mid-1960s after interpreting sparks from a trolleybus cable as a divine light from God.

He and his followers began to shun the outside world in the early part of this century.

One is not sure to laugh or cry at a prophet who gets his revelation from the sparks of a trolleybus cable, but in the end a vision is a vision no matter what the alleged divine source. All three major religions have had their break-away, nothing-to-do-with-this-life prophets and the few sheep that inevitably follow them over the cliff of rationality. The problem here is what may be labeled a dogmatic emphasis on the “unsocial contract.” In other words, this is a kind of cultural suicide, hardly the umma envisioned by the Prophet Muhammad.

The metaphor in the old photograph above is what intrigues me. The supposed rationale is that a team of domestic animals should be the same, generally two oxen. That is all well and good if you actually have two of these rather expensive beasts, but what if you don’t? In many cases farmers in the region had to make due with either a donkey or a camel, but hitching two different animals may not have been as rare as assumed, nor as problematic. Notice in this image that a little boy leads the camel, allowing it to keep the pace of the ox while the ploughman bears down on the blade. Rather than focus on there being two separate animals, think about the social cooperation of boy, man, ox and camel as a unit.

When the emphasis is on what makes the animals different either from each other or from humans, the broader point of cooperation is easily lost. The same is true in religion. Separatists are doomed to failure by their very nature, except as oases sustained within a wider pluralistic context. Those sects which survive learn to adapt to competing views and accept change, no matter what level of reticence. Consider the early Mormons, who were so far out of the mainstream that they were persecuted everywhere they went. No matter the doctrines still enshrined on the main webpage of the Church of Latter Day Saints, the church has embraced the very kind of patriotism that once forced them to the arid wilderness of Utah. This is the only way they could have survived.

I am certainly no prophet, even though I have seen trolleycar sparks in my youth, but I suspect that the future of Islam will see increasing rather than decreasing pluralism. As a religion which has spread well outside its Arabian geographic origin, the ways of being Muslim are far too many to ever be bottled into one halal variety. Even in the heyday of Islamic power there was never a unanimity of belief. Like Judaism and Christianity there will continue to be those who insist they represent the “true” faith, but no religion can resist the perpetual cultural change that envelops the entire globe. Think of that Palestinian fellah in the 1920s photograph above. He could never have imagined the technological and social change in his own backyard today. Today we think we can imagine, but the future is probably not best revealed by looking at a trolleycar, sparks or not.

Ayatollahs in America (starting in Oz, Kansas)

Bible and Holy Land, Election 2012, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamic Law, Islamophobia 101


A few months ago, before Big Bird got his “laid off” notice from Mitt Romney, the state of Kansas passed a law “to prevent Kansas courts or government agencies from making decisions based on Islamic or other foreign legal codes.” This passed by 33-3 in the Kansas senate and 120-0 in the Kansas House. Despite the fact that there is no indication that anyone ever tried to use Islamic sharia or any other “foreign” legal system to thwart existing law in Kansas, the legislators thought it prudent just in case. Despite the fact that the U.S. legal system does not allow any other kind of legal jurisdiction to trump it, who knows how many Muslim clerics may be thinking about moving to Kansas and issuing fatwas. Although Kansas is not the only Republican-controlled state legislature to declare jihad on Islamic law, it does have a reputation for reacting to other great moral dangers in our country, like the teaching of scientific evolution rather than creation in science classrooms. When the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz blurted out ” I *do* believe in spooks, I *do* believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I *do* believe in spooks, I *do* believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do, I *do*!”, who would have known how much like the Kansas legislators he was.

Perhaps the Kansas politicians think that after Iran’s Ahmadinejad spoke (and spooked, of course) at the United Nations in liberal New York City that he might turn himself into the Wicked Witch of the East and start chopping hands of thieves and stoning men and women who engage in adultery (which does not appear to have reached epidemic proportions yet in Kansas but could if more Democrats are elected). Of course, this is not about hating Islam (a religion that in some respects can look a like that of the God-fearing Mormons not far away in Utah), but to protect the women of Kansas. As Republican State Senator Susan Wagle expressed it,

“In this great country of ours and in the state of Kansas, women have equal rights,” Wagle said during the Senate’s debate. “They stone women to death in countries that have Shariah law.”

Apart from the fact that the vast majority of countries that use Islamic law do not in fact stone anyone for adultery, you never know who might cast the first stone in a state like Kansas. Continue reading Ayatollahs in America (starting in Oz, Kansas) →

It’s still a rocky road

Anthropology/Sociology, Bible and Holy Land, Election 2012


A few weeks ago I wrote a commentary which was eventually published in my “Middle East Muddle” column on Anthropology News. This was entitled “Between the Rock of Ages and a Hard Sell.” This was a month before the debate held earlier this week. Below I provide the first two paragraphs of my commentary, but you can read the whole thing here. After reading it, you can return here and see my update after the first debate.

As the 2012 presidential election draws near, the debate thus far has been anything but civil. Attack ads from all sides have been fact-checked and found wanting. A recent Pew poll found that 17% of registered voters still think President Obama is a Muslim and only 49% said he was Christian. Only 60% of registered voters are aware that Republican challenger Mitt Romney is Mormon. Of those who know Romney is Muslim 19% admit they are uncomfortable with his affiliation. To the extent religion matters, and anyone who thinks religion does not matter in American politics needs to think again, both the current Vice-President Joe Biden and the Republican candidate Paul Ryan are Catholic.

For voters in the Bible Belt this puts the choice on November 6 between a rock and a hard place, making it a hard sell for those who sing “The Rock of Ages” in Sunday morning services. Growing up decades ago in a proudly “fundamentalist” Baptist church in northern Ohio, I was told that Mormons were a cult, the Catholic church was Satanic and Muslims were obviously bound for hell along with all the others who were not born-again Bible believers. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were Baptist, but as astute politicians they did not promote the more extreme beliefs of their faith just as John F. Kennedy did not mandate Catholic doctrine. The last time around Obama was attacked for having belonged to a church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Both Obama and Jon McCain submitted to a religious litmus test in a televised forum hosted by Rick Warren, senior pastor of the one of the largest Protestant churches in America. This time, however, religion is taking a back seat to the economy, but the religious faith of each candidate is still the elephant in the room.

The first daily tracking polls after the debate, which the pundits gave to Romney hands down, show that there has yet to be a big bounce on the ground; even Rasmussen (which usually leans Republican) has Obama ahead nationally by 2 points on Thursday and Friday. Beyond the polls and pundits, however, it is still a very rocky road for Romney, whose etch-a-sketch performance in the debate will be hard to stretch against all the things he has been saying previously. Today’s drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8%, the same as when Obama took office, will blow out the tires of a campaign bus already in the ditch. But to my mind, the biggest mistake Romney made was promising to end the career of Big Bird. I realize that 8-year olds cannot vote (and depending on their skin color may not find it easy to vote when they grow up in certain states), but they can grab onto their parent’s arms and beg them to save Big Bird and Sesame Street. If Romney loses by a nose, it will be a combination of his own Pinocchio moments and the beak of an unemployed Big Bird.

Who is the Master Debater?

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2012, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican


Events in the Middle East continue to fester and flair with yet more deaths in Syria, rumors of the Kurds carving out an enclave for themselves in the ruins of Assad’s state, Kenyan troops cleansing the Al Shabab from their last stronghold in Somalia, cross firings between leaders of Iran, Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the anything but united UN, and the list goes on and on. But in America, now that the official NFL refs are back on the job, the media is gearing up for the first presidential debate between a sitting President that was once thought to be in electoral trouble and a Republican candidate who has been so inept that he may re-enact a Goldwater moment for the party of Lincoln (and now of Lincolns, Lexus and Jaguars).

I suspect quite a few voters will watch the debate, even those who have already made up their minds and voted early, and others will watch just to confirm how much they dislike one of the candidates. But for all the hoopla, these debates are so choreographed that winners and losers tend to be determined only in the eyes of the beholders. Romney could stick his foot, ankle, calf and knee in his mouth and Fox News will still declare him the winner. The MSNBC anchors will try to stifle their laughter, but they actually knew who would win before the show opened. And a show it will be. Think of it as the MLB home-run hitting context with the BP fastballs lain in there, right down the pike, not as a boxing match where someone might get bloodied and knocked out. Consider this: George W. Bush survived his debates and won re-election. Does anyone seriously think that Obama will forget who the leader of China is?

There are a number of questions that I suspect will not be asked, even though quite a few Americans may be mulling over them before they make a “legitimate” vote (I suppose in Todd Aiken’s view this would be a vote in which the voter has a built-in ability to reject liberals and shows an I.D. issued by the NRA). How about these?

• Governor Romney, if you are elected President and Jesus Christ comes back to earth before you take the oath of office, will you be disappointed? Will you urge the Republicans in Congress not to filibuster any of the programs for the poor that Jesus might want to introduce?

• President Obama, why won’t you admit your are a Muslim born in Kenya? If Governor Romney is elected President, will you agree to self deport yourself back to Africa and stop passing yourself off as a white guy?

• Governor Romney, given the rising costs of health care for the elderly, who are often given medical tests they really do not need, would you as president give a tax break to faith healers as an alternative to the E.R.?

• President Obama, you once wrote a book called “The Audacity of Hope.” Is it true that your are currently working on your next book and it will be called “The Audacity of Hype”?

• Governor Romney, if last time around the VP candidate Sarah Palin was a pit bull, do you think that Paul Ryan is a poodle or a Doberman? Has the campaign committee put him through a dog training school yet?

• President Obama, is there a room in the basement of the White House where Joe Biden can be sent and the key thrown away?

• Governor Romney, do you actually shop at Staples?

• President Obama, if you are not re-elected President, would you be willing to work at Staples for a minimum wage or would you prefer to take your chances in the NBA draft?

I have one more suggestion. Since there are three debates, could we remake “Survivor” and vote one of them (or both of them) off the stage at the end of the third debate?