Skip to main content

Home/ Ed Webb Religion & Politics Seminars/ Group items tagged cartoon

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life - New York Times - 0 views

eduwebb.pbwiki.com/Fatwas.htm

fatwa Islam egypt NYT MENA

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • 'We were very angered when we heard about the Danish cartoons concerning our prophet; however, these two fatwas are harming our Islamic religion and our prophet more than the cartoons,''
  • The complaint has been the subject of recent conferences as government-appointed arbiters of Islamic standards say the fatwa free-for-all has led to the promotion of extremism and intolerance. The conflict in Egypt served as a difficult reminder of a central challenge facing Islamic communities as they debate the true nature of the faith and how to accommodate modernity. The fatwa is the front line in the theological battle between often opposing worldviews. It is where interpretation meets daily life.
  • In a faith with no central doctrinal authority, there has been an explosion of places offering fatwas, from Web sites that respond to written queries, to satellite television shows that take phone calls, to radical and terrorist organizations that set up their own fatwa committees.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Governments have tried to guide and control the process, but as they struggled with their own legitimacy, they have often undermined the perceived legitimacy of those they appoint as religious leaders.
  • combines the role of social worker, therapist, lawyer and religious adviser.
  • 'We are the conscience of the nation,'' said Abdel Moety Bayoumi, a member of Al Azhar Research Committee, a state-sanctioned body that issues religious opinions and is often behind decisions over which books should be stripped from store shelves and banned. In Egypt, and other Muslim countries, where laws must abide by the Koran, fatwas by government-appointed officials can have the weight of law. ''We have to be clear what is at stake here,'' said Egypt's grand mufti, Sheik Ali Gomaa, in a recent speech in London. ''When each and every person's unqualified opinion is considered a fatwa, we have lost a tool that is of the utmost importance to rein in extremism and preserve the flexibility and balance of Islamic law.''
Ed Webb

You MUST mock - Official site of Stephen Fry - 0 views

www.stephenfry.com/...you-must-mock

censorship blasphemy opinion France UK Britain cartoons Islam Judaism Christianity

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • let no one think that in order to be defended against censorship of any kind, let alone the terminal horrors of Wednesday 7th January, a work of art or a film or a novel or a cartoon need be ‘first rate’ (whatever that means).
Ed Webb

Lebanon news - NOW Lebanon -Blasphemy: an indispensable human right - 0 views

www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx

religion politics blasphemy opinion Islam OIC

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • the Organization of Islamic Conference has seized on the controversies regarding an anti-Islam video clip on YouTube and satirical cartoons about Mohammed in a French magazine to renew its call for a global ban on "blasphemy." The OIC is, in effect, not only announcing that Muslim states in general have no intention of allowing real freedom of conscience and speech, but they want to bully the West into eliminating those freedoms as well.
  • Who, after all, will be authorized to define "blasphemy"? Does anything that offends any religious sensibilities qualify as "blasphemy"? Will a critical mass of objections be seen as legitimate grounds for silencing critics of religious doctrine, scholarly inquiry into their origins, skeptical analysis of superstition and faith, iconoclasm, or mockery of religious claims, symbols, assertions, and shibboleths?
  • Several Arab states, including Egypt and Kuwait, have recently been toying with new criminal definitions of "blasphemy" that specifically ban insulting the wives and companions of the Prophet Mohammed, which is barely concealed code for the suppression of Shiite doctrinal criticism of Sunni Islam. The OIC is based in Saudi Arabia, a country that does not allow freedom of worship for any non-Muslims. The examples of the hypocrisy behind these calls are simply endless.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • These calls reflect a paranoid worldview that is widespread among Muslims that their religion is under some kind of global assault. If so—because Islam is spreading faster than almost any other religion, with the possible exception of Mormonism—it's an odd kind of siege. In reality, Islam is thriving in its countries of origin and spreading quickly into the West.
  • Embracing modernity requires tolerating such fears without demanding the enforcement of religious orthodoxy, even of an ecumenical variety, through the power of the state.
  • Reason and skepticism, for good or ill, are not poised to overthrow faith
Ed Webb

BBC News - Neighbours at war in Lebanon's divided city of Tripoli - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-21336372

Lebanon Syria war sectarianism religion identities politics

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The Alawites once ruled the roost here, back in the 1980s, when Lebanon was occupied by Syrian forces, whose then President, Hafez al-Assad, was a member of the heterodox Shia sect. But now their 50,000-strong population is crammed onto a hilltop called Jabal Muhsin. Surrounded by hostile Sunni areas, it is effectively under siege.
  • Every few weeks, armed clashes erupt and the neighbours go at each other with sniper rifles, machine-guns, rocket launchers and mortars
  • Charismatic and politically ambitious, Sheikh Bilal's every waking hour seems dominated by his hatred of the Syrian regime in Damascus - and its Alawite allies up on the hill. With long hair and wild eyes, he reminds me of a young Rasputin. Sheikh Bilal is today where Abu Rami was 30 years ago: young, trigger-happy and eager for the fight. When he is not preaching jihad or selling phones, he leads a small militia of local toughs. And when the clashes break out, he is a dab-hand with a sniper rifle, shunning modern assault weapons for his beloved bolt-action Lee Enfield.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • He thinks that the slaughter in neighbouring Syria will lead to the overthrow of the Assad regime that back in the 1980s murdered his father, his friends and so many of his neighbours.
  • Muawiya is barely out of nappies and he would probably rather watch cartoons than Free Syrian Army propaganda. But his head is being filled daily with sectarian chauvinism and thoughts of war. As we interview his father, Muawiya starts firing an imaginary rifle made from a stick. He is very specific in his actions - it is an imaginary bolt-action sniper rifle
  • Out on the streets of Bab al-Tabbana we film other young boys playing war games. They take aim and shoot their toy rifles uphill towards Jabal Muhsin
  • Up on the Jabal, it is a mirror image. The kids point their plastic Kalashnikovs down the slope, as their fathers do in real life.
  • The young men who make up the militia on both sides look identical in their skinny jeans, knock-off Adidas weightlifter vests, baseball caps and Maori-style tattoos.
Ed Webb

Statement of Support for Art Professor Fired from Hamline University - Muslim Public Af... - 0 views

www.mpac.org/...-fired-from-hamline-university

opinion US USA education academia universities university censorship art public Islam islamophobia

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Jan 23 - Cached
  • Even if it is the case that many Muslims feel uncomfortable with such depictions, Dr. Prater was trying to emphasize a key principle of religious literacy: religions are not monolithic in nature, but rather, internally diverse. This principle should be appreciated in order to combat Islamophobia, which is often premised on flattening out Islam and viewing the Islamic tradition in an essentialist and reductionist manner.
  • In a time of rampant Islamophobia, highly offensive and racialized images of the Prophet Muḥammad abound on the internet and on social media. We consider these images to be inappropriate and not dissimilar to “black face” or Anti-Semitic cartoons; even if such images and their makers are protected by law, social opprobrium is due to them by all those who are reasonable and decent.
  • misusing the label “Islamophobia” has the negative effect of watering down the term and rendering it less effective in calling out actual acts of bigotry.
1 - 10 of 10
Showing 20▼ items per page