The Different Kinds of Hunger: Ramadan at Guantanamo
By Sajida Jalalzai. A hunger strike at Guantanamo during Ramadan reveals contradictions about religion, ethics, and prisoners’ rights. Continue Reading →
Tag: torture
The Longest Hunger Strike
By Ann Neumann There are two places in the U.S. where you can be fed against your will: a Catholic hospital and a prison. Continue Reading →
On Not Enjoying Zero Dark Thirty… For the Right Reasons.
By Angela ZitoThis is The War. The War is far, far away, on a screen. It is terrible and distant. And most of us have never been made uncomfortable by it for a nanosecond. Continue Reading →
The Third Baptism
Sarah Sentilles writes at Religion Dispatches today that Trevor Case’s alleged waterboarding of his girlfriend is unsurprising considering our “torture culture,” rates of domestic violence and historical religious precedent:
In his 2008 article “Torture and Religious Practice,” William Schweiker traces the Christian roots of waterboarding, which was used, for example, during the Spanish Inquisition and in the persecution of Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation. Schweiker argues that waterboarding is religious violence not only due to its pedigree, but because it carries a particularly religious meaning: that it functioned as a kind of baptism.
Since the Anabapists rejected infant baptism in favor of adult baptism, to take one example, King Ferdinand declared drowning a “Third Baptism,” and an appropriate response to their heretical practices. Schweiker writes that waterboarding-as-baptism was presented as a way to “save” the person being tortured by delivering the accused from his or her sins. Torture became punishment for sins, and punishment became an act of mercy and salvation.
Making Torture Beautiful
Making Torture Beautiful 11 June 2005 by Jeff Sharlet In 1989, Andres Serrano dunked a crucifix in a vat of urine and took a photograph of it and called it Continue Reading →
The Menstrual Technique
The Washington Post follows AP’s lead a week late in reporting on sexual interrogation tactics used at Guantanomo to religiously humiliate Muslim prisoners. What explains the time lag? The Pentagon has Continue Reading →
Open Letter to Gonzales
225 Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders, organized by Church Folks for a Better America, have written an open letter to Alberto Gonzales to condemn the use of torture under any Continue Reading →