Hey Religion Writers: You’re Doing it Again!
by Amy Levin For those bizarre folks who follow, track, analyze, or write about religion and media, it is high time you give up these 5 tired tropes. Continue Reading →
Tag: secularism
Calvin's Geneva? The New International Discourse of Blasphemy
By Austin Dacey The Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards was meeting to address “gaps” in an international human rights treaty on racism and racial discrimination. Continue Reading →
Calvin’s Geneva? The New International Discourse of Blasphemy
By Austin Dacey The Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards was meeting to address “gaps” in an international human rights treaty on racism and racial discrimination. Continue Reading →
Atheism vs Religion: The Final Countdown?
What’s missing here, and in so many similar arguments, is that religion works. Continue Reading →
Making Alevism:Lawfare, Secularism and The Secular
A response to Markus Dressler’s essay, “Making Religion Through Secularist Legal Discourse: The Case of Turkish Alevism”
On a rather chill afternoon in March of 2005, I sat across from Ali Bey, the president of the Cem Foundation, one of the largest civil society institutions dedicated to Turkey’s Alevi community in all of Istanbul. After calling to the kitchen to request a fresh round of tea, Ali Bey proceeded with his monologue:
Think of two families, one Sunni, one Alevi. The Sunni woman is wearing a headscarf, the man has a long beard, they appear to have just arrived from the village. Then look at the Alevi family: the man is clean-shaven, the woman has fine hair, the children are clean and well-dressed. Which of these two would you say is modern, secular? The Alevi family, of course. And yet the (Turkish) state does not recognize us as a legitimate minority. True secularism does not exist here.
These were not unfamiliar or unsurprising sentiments for me to encounter. Throughout two years of research with Alevi NGOs in both Istanbul and Ankara, I frequently spoke with Alevis who drew a direct connection between the ‘modernity’ and ‘secularity’ characteristic of most Alevis and the failures of Turkish secularism, which they typically understand to be fatally skewed in favor of Turkey’s Sunni Muslims. This irony—the ostensible failure of Turkey’s political and legal system of secularism to recognize its most ‘secular’ subjects as a legitimate religious minority—is the crucible and dynamo of much Alevi political mobilization. Continue Reading →
Qu’est qui ce passe en France?
Ashley Baxstrom: What’s up with France? President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined President Barack Obama here in New York last week to celebrate the 125th anniversary of France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty to the US. The statue was originally dedicated on Oct. 28, 1886 in recognition of the French-American friendship established during the Revolutionary War.
Both leaders hailed the statue as a symbol of freedom. “It is not simply a statue,” Sarkozy said through a translator. “It is a notion, an idea, an emblem. It is for all people of the world.” But while the French were proud to offer America “The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” (full titles, please), they seem to be having more trouble balancing the values of la liberté and l’éclaircissement in their own country. Continue Reading →
Be The Next Jesus. Or L. Ron Hubbard.
Amy Levin: Huffington Post Comedy recently ended a short and perhaps not-so-sweet competition called “Create Your Own Religion.” Though curiously lasting only three days, the call ushered in 906 submissions, including 113 (and counting) featured in a slideshow. The contest was open to anyone with enough free time to send in a catchy name, photo, and set of beliefs, rituals, and holidays – clearly, all a religion needs to survive.
The Church of the Eternal Mimosa Continue Reading →
Tunisia’s Secular-Religious Tension Heightens
Kathryn Montalbano: In post-revolution Tunisia, tensions between what have been described as secular and conservative Muslim citizens recently heightened in the capital, Tunis, foreboding one of the major difficulties the country will face in rebuilding its sovereignty. On Tuesday, members of the Islamist Salafist movement, which has propagated its demands in several Arab countries this spring (i.e. Jordan and Egypt), demanded the return of six of their activists who’d been arrested for vandalizing a cinema that was host to a group of secular lawyers. Continue Reading →
Tunisia’s Secular-Religious Tension Heightens
Kathryn Montalbano: In post-revolution Tunisia, tensions between what have been described as secular and conservative Muslim citizens recently heightened in the capital, Tunis, foreboding one of the major difficulties the country will face in rebuilding its sovereignty. On Tuesday, members of the Islamist Salafist movement, which has propagated its demands in several Arab countries this spring (i.e. Jordan and Egypt), demanded the return of six of their activists who’d been arrested for vandalizing a cinema that was host to a group of secular lawyers. Continue Reading →
Tunisia's Secular-Religious Tension Heightens
Kathryn Montalbano: In post-revolution Tunisia, tensions between what have been described as secular and conservative Muslim citizens recently heightened in the capital, Tunis, foreboding one of the major difficulties the country will face in rebuilding its sovereignty. On Tuesday, members of the Islamist Salafist movement, which has propagated its demands in several Arab countries this spring (i.e. Jordan and Egypt), demanded the return of six of their activists who’d been arrested for vandalizing a cinema that was host to a group of secular lawyers. Continue Reading →