Category Archives: Religion

Defending your gimmick

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The NYT is reporting that Jewish synagogues are enticing new members with yoga. They’re mimicking the recruiting techniques of evangelical megachurches, even though some evangelicals have later disavowed yoga as heathen and tried to Christianize it.

A group of New York-area congregations… refashion their synagogues into religious multiplexes on the Sabbath, featuring programs like “Shabbat yoga” and comedy alongside traditional worship… a… synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan… has organized Sabbath programs around tai chi and nature walks. Others have tried yoga classes and stand-up comedy as a means of Sabbath observance. [Link]

Comedy in a synagogue? What, they’re showing Seinfeld? I say, get your own damn gimmick. You don’t see Hindus serving matzoh ball soup (mmm, matzoh ball soup). You don’t see Muslims serving wine with a wink-wink, ‘It’s sangre, not sangría.’ Red dearth and pour in vain.

And what’s this about Shabbat yoga? Aren’t you supposed to avoid work on Shabbat? I guess that rules out Bikram yoga. Besides, you’re nicking the wrong gimmick. Want to rip a desi religion? A friendly suggestion: serve Sikh-style langar (mmm, langar). Treble attendance, guaranteed 😉

Although Abhi apparently needs a hug, my favorite recruiting technique is the one practiced by a very, very dangerous cult I walk past every morning on the Bandra promenade by the Arabian Sea. It’s called the Laughter Club of Joggers’ Park, and it’s 50 uncles and aunties laughing in unison, ‘Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha,’ like deranged, elderly cheerleaders. Every morning I watch apple-cheeked grannies and patka-clad uncles bending side to side expelling belly laughs. One morning a beggar missing a couple of his toes sat on the ground chortling along with them. Continue reading →

Possible hate crime on Baylor campus

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My friend Anji M. tips me off to a possible hate crime on the Baylor campus down in Texas. Many of the news reports seem to highlight (sometimes multiple times in the same article) that the senior was involved with Muslim-Christian dialog on campus.

A Muslim Baylor University senior of South Asian heritage who was active in Muslim-Christian relations was attacked on the school’s campus Saturday night, suffering multiple injuries.

Chief Jim Doak of the Baylor Department of Public Safety confirmed that police were alerted about the attack and that the incident is being investigated, but he refused to release further details. Neither Doak nor a university spokeswoman could immediately say whether the alleged attack will be investigated as a hate crime.

The Baylor DPS web site indicated that the attack occurred near Draper Hall between 8:45 and 9 p.m.

Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the victim called them Monday and said a man, thought to be in his 30s, grabbed her hijab, an Islamic head scarf, and threw the woman to the ground. As he did, the attacker allegedly yelled anti-Muslim and ethnic slurs at the woman including “Arabian (expletive)” and “(expletive) Muslims.”

When the woman screamed, her attacker reportedly slapped her and kicked her multiple times in the ribs, according to Ahmed. An emergency room examination found bruises and a dislocated shoulder, Ahmed said.

The victim, who was active in Muslim-Christian relations on the Baylor campus, went to her family home in Oklahoma after the attack. Ahmed said she was told the victim would stay home for about a week. [Link]

Here is another account with additional details. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) got in touch with the FBI soon after word of the incident surfaced. The FBI agreed to send someone down:

“We have had an FBI representative on campus with us throughout the day today and will continue to work with the agency as this process goes forward,” Doak said.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic relations called on the FBI Tuesday to probe the attack on the coed as a hate crime. [Link]

We’ll try to keep readers updated when additional details emerge.

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Punishing the Victim III: Teenager to be Executed for Killing Rapist

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Amnesty International issued a public statement regarding the death sentence of an Iranian teenager:

On 3 January, 18-year-old Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court, after she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj in March 2005. She was seventeen at the time. Her sentence is subject to review by the Court of Appeal, and if upheld, to confirmation by the Supreme Court. According to reports in the Iranian newspaper, E’temaad, Nazanin told the court that three men had approached her and her niece, forced them to the ground and tried to rape them. Seeking to defend her niece and herself, Nazanin stabbed one man in the hand with a knife that she possessed and then, when the men continued to pursue them, stabbed another of the men in the chest. She reportedly told the court “I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help”, but was nevertheless sentenced to death. [Link]

The court’s judgment has, to some, further exposed the unfairness of Islamic law with respect to women. As others have pointed out, Nazanin may have been unable to prove that she acted in self-defense because of certain evidentiary rules in Islamic law that place greater weight on the testimony of males.

The women asked, “O Allah’s Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?” He said, “Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?” They replied in the affirmative. He said, “This is the deficiency in her intelligence. [Link]

Accordiginly, Nazanin and her niece may have testified that the three men attempted to rape them, but the testimony of the two surviving men would have successfully refuted this claim.

(For those interested, there is an online petition to “save” Nazanin, which will be submitted to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and others.)

The case has also reinvigorated the debate about whether the death penalty should be applied to teenagers (an issue the Supreme Court of the United States recently addressed in Roper v. Simmons), and whether capital punishment should be abolished entirely.

In India, rape is not punishable by death, however some have argued that the availability of capital punishment should extend to rape cases. Columnist Vir Sanghvi, for example, suggested that “rape is as bad as murder,” particularly because of the nature of Indian society:

It is almost impossible to recover and lead a normal life after you have been raped in India. First of all, you probably can’t talk about it. Secondly, in many cases, even when you do complain, no action is taken against the rapist. Thirdly, you are finished on the arranged marriage market and if you’re already married, your husband acts as though you are now shop soiled. And finally, far from being counselled to cope with the trauma of rape, you face a new trauma: society’s hostility. [Link]

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Templezilla vs. Megachurch

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Earlier Abhi posted about the booming hair trade at the main Venkateshwara temple in Tirupati. It turns out that the sale of devotees’ hair is only one of this massive temple’s revenue streams, which dwarf those of American megachurches. Other revenue streams include cash, gold and diamond donations, laddoo sales and e-hundi.

Tirupati

E-hundi? Yes, electronic donations. You can donate to the temple right from ATMs owned by Andhra Bank and State Bank of India. The lords work in mysterious ways, but especially at withdrawal time:

“Andhra Bank ATM cardholders can make payments into the `hundi’ of Lord Venkateswara of Tirumala, from any of the bank’s ATMs. All they have to do is insert their card, enter the amount to be credited to the hundi account and it would be done instantly. In future, the facility would be extended to make payments for railway reservations and other services…” [Link]

Tirupati is also the most visited temple in the world. It is estimated that more that 50,000 people visit the temple everyday; this makes it almost 19 million people in a year, almost double the estimated number of people visiting Vatican City… Tirupati is the second richest religious institution after the Vatican City… it usually takes anywhere from 2 to 40 hours, depending on the season, to get to the Sanctom sanctorum from the time one registers into the queue system. [Link – thanks, tef]

The temple staff alone amounts to a number of 18,000. [Link]

Hundi collections (cash donation by devotees) account for roughly one-third of the Tirupati trust’s income. It also earns substantial money from the sale of human hair (offered by devotees) and laddoos, apart from interest on bank deposits. [Link]

For added convenience, you can book religious pilgrimages at State Bank branches worldwide. Separation of temple and state, what?

The bank is in tie-up with the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams management on a package to get the various `sevas’ in Tirumala temple and cottages booked at any of the bank’s branches in the world. ‘ `e-hundi’ is also part of the software, wherein a devotee can drop his offerings either in an ATM in the country or at the 52 overseas offices in 33 countries. [Link]

The bank was nationalised in 1955 with the Reserve Bank of India having a 60% stake. [Link]

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The tao of Steve

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Last weekend I saw Inside Man, currently the top movie in America. In Spike Lee’s excellent caper mystery, actor Waris Singh Ahluwalia explains the significance of the Sikh turban, covering your head in the presence of god, to the largest American audience to date. It’s very cool of Lee to carve out screen time for this exposition, and more such movies might reduce Sikh harassment in America.

The hollow men

On the other hand, Denzel Washington’s rejoinder (‘Bet you can catch a cab…’) feels like shuffling, not dancing. I didn’t catch Ahluwalia’s smack-back because the audience was laughing too hard at the turban-cabbie joke. Ick. Ahluwalia gets the lion’s share of the desi actors’ screen time. Reena Shah has a couple of seconds as a hostage, and Jay Charan is barely seen as a bank teller.

The movie opens with ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya‘ from Dil Se, and Punjabi MC raps over an orchestra-enhanced mix during the closing credits. The inclusion of ‘Chaiyya’ has nothing to do with Hindi samples in hip-hop or Bombay Dreams — Lee draws directly from the source (thanks, mallika). At some point desi influence in American pop culture will melt in so thoroughly, it won’t even be worthy of remark. Then the Uighur-Americans will start blogging about how poorly they’re represented in popular American culture. Viva la Uighur Mutiny.

Viva la
Uighur MutinyThe flick reminds me of Gurinder Chadha’s newer movies: it’s a thoroughly commercial film, a bid for mainstream relevance which still shouts out to the brotherhood (minorities, blue-collar workers, Brooklyn and polyglot NYC). It finesses the task of melding social commentary, such as a violent Grand Theft Auto parody, with product placements galore. As unfocused as it is, just one of Lee’s movies gives you more to chew on than three normal Hollywood flicks. Unlike Chadha’s work, Inside Man objectifies women as much as She Hate Me reportedly did, with an extended joke about big tits.

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We’ve got a live one!

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We’ve got a new inductee for the Exotica Hall of Shame. This Chicago Sun-Times review of a new Chicago pop opera called Sita Ram is out to set some kind of density record for exotica-spew on Desilandia (thanks, WGIIA):

Adding to the spicy flavor are Scott C. Neale’s brilliantly colored street signs of India, Mara Blumenfeld’s curry-tinted costumes (many imported from India), Chris Binder’s deft lighting, plus shadow puppets and exotic instruments. There are moments when it feels like you are watching a traveling troupe that has set up shop in the center of an Indian village, and you half expect a cow or water buffalo to wander through. [Link]

I see that Jai Uttal is involved in this project. Say no more.

“Sita Ram” is the creation of director-writer David Kersnar and Grammy-nominated composer and co-lyricist Jai Uttal… [Link]

Hedy Weiss, you are dead to me

Related posts: Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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“U.K.’s Highest Court Backs School Ban on Muslim Dress”

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In 2000, a Muslim girl named Shabina Begum enrolled in Denbigh High School in Luton, England. The school required students to wear uniforms, and the uniforms were developed in consideration of the fact that approximately 80% of the students at Denbigh were Muslim:

In devising a suitable uniform, the school went to immense trouble to accommodate the religious and cultural preferences of the pupils and their families. There was consultation with parents, students, staff and the Imams of the three local mosques. One version of the uniform was the shalwar kameez (or kameeze), a sleeveless smock-like dress with a square neckline, worn over a shirt, tie and loose trousers which taper at the ankles. [Link]

In accordance with her religious beliefs and consistent with the school’s uniform requirements, Shabina wore a salwar kameez, or “shalwar kameez” as noted above. She did so for the first two years of her time at Denbigh. However, she later determined that the salwar kameez would not be appropriate for her to wear.

Her brother Shuweb Rahman says that “as Shabina became older she took an increasing interest in her religion” and through her interest in religion “discovered that the shalwar kameez was not an acceptable form of dress for Muslim women in public places.” [In 2002, Shabina] turned up at school wearing a long shapeless black gown known as a jilbab. [Link]

The school’s response? The assistant head master told Shabina to “go home and change.” She went home and never came back.

Shabina sued, claiming that her freedom to manifest her religion was violated. Yesterday, five Law Lords unanimously disagreed, holding that

there was no interference with the respondent’s [i.e., Shabina’s] right to manifest her belief in practice or observance. [Link]

The Lords apparently reasoned, in part, that Shabina could have simply gone to another school nearby that had a more suitable uniform policy:

there were three schools in the area at which the wearing of the jilbab was permitted…. There is, however, no evidence to show that there was any real difficulty in her attending one or other of these schools…. [Link]

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"The blacker the soul…"

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For the past week the darling of the media has been Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia:

President Bush welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the White House on Tuesday, calling Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state “a pioneer.”

In January, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the inauguration of the 67-year-old Harvard-educated former finance minister. She inherits a war-ruined nation of 3 million with an 80 percent unemployment rate, no running water and no electricity. Despite its diamond and timber wealth, Liberia is among the world’s poorest; ranked 206th in per capita income out of 208 countries on a 2004 World Bank list.

Neither leader publicly commented on U.S. aid to Liberia or Sirleaf’s request for Nigeria to hand over exiled former President Charles Taylor, who is wanted on war crimes charges. Taylor has been indicted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity by aiding and directing a Sierra Leone rebel movement and trading guns and gems with insurgents infamous for chopping off the lips, ears and limbs of civilian victims. [Link]

The shadow of Charles Taylor will dominate Liberian politics for the forseeable future. Taylor is one of the main reasons why I have vowed never to purchase a worthless “rock” for anyone.

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia’s president on August 2, 1997, following a landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by observers, although Taylor’s victory has been partially attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost, and therefore many people may have voted for him simply to preserve peace. For example, his campaign song included the words “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I’ll vote for him…”

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor’s arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor’s administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania… [Link]

So that brings us to the negotiations which seek to extradite the scum bag from Nigeria. Many people are afraid that bringing him to justice will cause bloodshed by polarizing the fragile country once again. Some of the negotiations on Taylor’s behalf are being conducted by an American. He is an Indian American evangelical preacher to be precise: Kilari Anand Paul. Continue reading →

The Martyrdom of Abdul Rahman (slightly updated)

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Apparently, THIS is why my sister’s friends are putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan: The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen

An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants.

Rahman, who was carrying a bible last month when he was arrested and charged with dissing Islam, has a backstory which is perfect for a Christian martyr, replete with persecution from the most intimate levels:

He converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan. His estranged family denounced him in a custody dispute over his two children.

Four years after the Taleban was ousted, conservative clerics are still in control of Afghanistan’s judiciary, stymieing Hamid Karzai’s reform-minded government, which would obviously prefer a secular legal branch. Afghanistan’s Sharia-based constitution enables this mess, creating a clusterfuck where Karzai can’t intervene in this case of conservatives v. reformists.

Trial Judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadeh benevolently states:

“We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him,”

…and if not, they will kill him.

How tolerant of them. Shame on such narrow-minded hypocrites. Shame on those whose narrow-minded hypocrisy defiles a religion which means “peace”.

It turns out that they don’t just hate Christians (whew! THAT’S a relief):

Several journalists have been prosecuted under blasphemy laws in post-Taleban Afghanistan.
The editor of a women’s rights magazine was convicted of insulting Islam and sentenced to death last year – but was later released after an apology and heavy international pressure.

I don’t want to be the president of Afghanistan right now. Constitutionally castrated, he can’t do a thing as Sharia-mad clerics rush to judge and potentially execute a man whose only crime was choosing a different (and still Abrahamic!) faith. Continue reading →

All She Wants to Do is Dance…

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rubiya203.jpg

…but if certain people had their way, she wouldn’t. Via the BBC:

The family of a young Muslim girl in India’s southern state of Kerala say they are being shunned by the local mosque committee (mahallu) because she is practising Indian classical dance.
VP Rubiya, 16, came first in Bharatnatyam, Kerala natanam and folk dance competitions at the recent Kerala School Festival.
She also won the dance competition at the Veeran Haji Memorial Higher Secondary School at Morayur in the Muslim-dominated district of Malappuram.

To me this is such a Mallu thing: twenty years ago when I asked for Bharatnatyam lessons, I was scolded so harshly you’d think I’d said “stripper” when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.

“That is NOT a Christian thing to do,” my normally-very-chill Mother snapped. When she noticed my perplexed expression, she tried to explain her reaction.

“It’s not just a dance, it is religious. It is very Hindu, and as an Orthodox girl you should understand why you can’t participate.”

I was still perturbed.

No one in my family has studied it”, she concluded, as if that was the end of that.

Apparently, the local mosque committee agrees with my parent, and that’s why they aren’t showing this talented child love. Rubiya’s daddy calls them out on their bias:

“If she had won prizes in ‘oppana’ and ‘mappila pattu’ [traditional Muslim art forms], she would have been flooded with gifts by now. The mahallu leaders would never openly admit that it is her dance that makes them treat us as virtual outcasts,” says Mr Alavikutty.

The indomitable Rubiya has danced since age three; she has performed at over 50 temples, using the fees she earns to help support her family. Her dance gurus RLV Anand and Bharatanjali Sasi don’t charge her for her lessons or her costumes.

“I’m confident that she will bring us laurels. That’s all we need,” says Mr Anand, extolling the virtues of the rare find from a community that still fights shy of classical dances.

I’m not at all surprised by the following:

Rubiya is the darling of her teachers and friends at the Veeran Haji high school.

…when the girl drops wisdom like THIS:

“God is one. When I pay ritualistic obeisance through mudras [hand signs], I am imploring not just the Hindu gods but the supreme creator, which we call by different names,” she says.

Word. Continue reading →