Obama, Running for Antichrist?

Apocalypse Watch, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican

Political candidates attract mud and the current presidential marathon on the Democratic side is no exception. Several conservative hit men have emphasized Obama’s Muslim middle name, Hussein, and used their rather pathetic poetic license to rhyme (without reason) Obama and Osama. Already relegated to the status of an urban legend, the smear tactic that Senator Obama is a mixed Muslim/Atheist still resonates in parts of rural America, no doubt among those white out-of-work blue collar men who think Hillary used to be a short-order cook.

But the image of a stealth Muhammadan running for President is outdone on the lunatic apocalyptic fringe of the Christian far-right by Dana Smith’s recent speculation about Barack Obama as the Antichrist. Here is the lead-in on the Raiders News Network:

People are swooning, falling headlong on the floor, while he speaks. Does Hillary get this reaction? An emphatic no is the answer! It seems today that from every corridor the people are talking about this. Is Obama the man? Is he the Anti Christ? Is he this or that? The truth is society is ready for the man of sin mentioned in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. But is Obama the man? The real verdict on that will be out until the end of his term. One thing for sure, his reign, if he is elected will be during a tremendously prophetic time on the calendar. All things are set for the uprising of the ‘man of perdition’. Continue reading Obama, Running for Antichrist? →

So if it’s not about religion …

Bible and Holy Land, Ethics, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

The War on Terror, upon which the GOP presidential candidates (minus libertarian Ron Paul) have been feasting, is promoted as a clash of civilizations masquerading as religions. In this pop culture scenario there is the secular West, which promises freedom of religion and only tolerates freedom from religion, vs. the fanatically religious non-West currently reduced to mad mullahs and Islamic Jihadists. We are told it is not about religion. That is true. It is, however, about religions. The West assumes it has tamed its religious impulse to crusade and colonize the Gospel to the ends of the commercially driven earth. Our religious wars are in the history books. Or are they?

Inquistors with holy orders have been replaced by mega-church preachers with rock-music intros. Witch trials have been overturned by a mentality that still thinks the 10 Commandments trump the U.S. Constitution. The United States is in legal theory not allowed by law to prohibit religious worship (although it did so against Native Americans). But America has only a veneer of secularism. Religious organizations no doubt take in more money than the IRS and not all that goes to charity. Much of this freedom of religion is an invitation to convert others or to promote outmoded notions such as biblical creation and Noah’s flood. The fact that half of the population in the U.S. still holds on to the myth of Adam and Eve as an explanation for human origins, despite the evidence from scientific research, says we are not yet free of irrational thinking.

Then there is “their” religions. Continue reading So if it’s not about religion … →

Anthropology in Arabic

Anthropology/Sociology, Environment, Folklore and Proverbs, Teaching Resources

As is true of many fields of academic study, there are Arabic introductions to the subjects. Many of these are little more than perfunctory translations of English-language textbooks. For a refreshing Arabic text introducing the whole field of Anthropology to Arabic readers, there is now an online work in progress by Saad Sowayan at http://www.saadsowayan.com/articles/anthropology.html.

Here is The Table of Contents

Introduction
02 بداية الحياة على الأرض Begining of Life
03 أحافير الرئيسيات Primate Fossils
04 الرئيسيات المعاصرة Modern Primates
05 البشريات Hominids
06 الأسس البيولوجية للثقافة Biological Bases
07 الإيكولوجيا الطبيعية Natural Ecology
08 الإيكولوجيا الثقافية Cultural Ecology
09 النسق الاقتصادي Economic System
10 النسق الديني Religion

Dr. Sowayan, who has conducted ethnographic and linguistic research in Saudi Arabia and is the editor of a massive volume on Arabian folklore, has made available much of his academic work online at his main website, with sections in Arabic and English.

The Bad Business of Badal

Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Palestine, YouTube Watch

A Palestinian filmmaker, Ibtisam Mara’ana, has recently made a film on badal (exchange) marriage from her own personal experience. Although in Arabic, it has English subtitles. To watch a five-minute clip from the film, click here.

Director Ibstisam Mara’ana was predestined, like most of her relatives, to be married off through the badal, a kind of package deal in which a brother and sister from one family marry a sister and brother from another. This marriage exchange is mainly aimed at providing less marriageable daughters with a husband. Mara’ana was told that she was too old and dark, and too ugly due to a scar on her hand, and that without the godsend of the badal, she would fall by the wayside. She refused to cooperate. Instead, she made this award-winning documentary to show how women oppress women. Continue reading The Bad Business of Badal →

The $2 Trillion Nightmare

Iraq War, Journalism and Media

By BOB HERBERT, The New York Times, March 4, 2008

We’ve been hearing a lot about “Saturday Night Live” and the fun it has been having with the presidential race. But hardly a whisper has been heard about a Congressional hearing in Washington last week on a topic that could have been drawn, in all its tragic monstrosity, from the theater of the absurd.

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war — not just the cost to taxpayers — will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. Continue reading The $2 Trillion Nightmare →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #16

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 16th in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #16

al-Ma’qil 3/ 29/1962

My Dear Brother Mr. Jabra (Ibrahim Jabra),

Is it possible for any Iraqi to visit the beautiful Baghdad and to intentionally leave it? I will certainly try to arrange for “many visits” there in the summer beginning in June, God willing. However, this letter is devoted to business, to the story of Oxford that is long overdue, and not for chatting. The important thing is that I have a lot of new poetry that I will recite to you when we meet.

The following are my responses to the questions of Professor Hurani. I write it in Arabic so you may translate it according to how you see fit. You have the absolute right in responding as you wish:

1- Yes. I wish to study at any university other than Oxford, on the condition that I obtain an acceptance through the mediation of professor Hurani.
2- I was supposed to begin last academic year, but I postponed it until next year (next October), and I believe that it is difficult to postpone it a second time.
3- I prefer to write a thesis in the field of Arabic Studies or in Comparative Literature between Arabic and English Literature. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #16 →

How Do You Prove You’re a Jew?

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel


Illustration by Elisabeth Moch for the New York Times

By GERSHOM GORENBERG, the New York Times, March 2, 2008

One day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fiancé to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove — before a rabbinic court, no less — that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she. Continue reading How Do You Prove You’re a Jew? →

An Iranian Laptop Dance

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iran, Terrorism Issue

Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group

by Gareth Porter, from IPS

WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (IPS) – The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” — 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop — as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme. But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad. Continue reading An Iranian Laptop Dance →