Religion

War of Position and War of Maneuver: Sexperts, Sex Pervs, and Sex Revolutionaries

The recent issue of Foreign Policy on sex has instigated critical feedback from many who have rightly challenged racist and Orientalist representations of gender and sexuality in the Muslim and Arab worlds. Several critics have rightly pointed out that essentialist approaches to culture that rely on facile binaries of men/women, freedom/oppression, and West/East lack any meaningful analyses of geopolitics, economy, colonial and post-colonial formations, and historical nuances. Most of these responses, however, have focused on Mona El Tahawy’s article, which reproduces discourses of violent Arab masculinity and victimized femininity. Here, however, I want to ...

Kuwait's Muslim Brotherhood

Islamist political movements have been sweeping the polls in post Arab uprisings that were sparked not by religious fervor and ideology, but by demands for democracy and freedom. Revolutionaries, who succeeded in toppling dictators such as those in Egypt and Tunisia, resent that Islamists who had little to do with their popular secular rebellions are now reaping the fruits of their efforts and being crowned as victors. More importantly, they are alarmed by the prospects of the formation of religious autocracies similar to those in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Islamist movements boast of better organizational skills and have for decades been in close contact with the poor, ...

Paradoxes of "Religious Freedom" in Egypt

The place of religion in the political order is arguably the most contentious issue in post-Mubarak Egypt. With Islamist-oriented parties controlling over 70 percent of seats in the new People’s Assembly and the constitution-writing process about to begin, liberals and leftists are apprehensive about the implications for Egyptian law and society, including the rights of Egypt’s millions of Coptic Christians. Mindful of these anxieties and pragmatic in its approach, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has backed away from earlier calls for an “Islamic state.” Its 2011 election platform opts instead to promote the sharia as a “frame of ...

Scandalous Flag Incident at Mannouba University: A Wake-up Call

The March 7th events at the University of Mannouba in Tunis drew my attention this week: could this be a wake-up call? A salafi who is not a student at the university took down the Tunisian flag from the rooftop of the university and replaced it with the salafi black flag – inscribed in Arabic with la ilaha illa Allah Muhammad rasul Allah (“There is no God but God and Muhammad is His prophet”). We Tunisians say this phrase many times a day; when we are surprised for instance, we say la ilaha illa Allah (there is no God but God) or when we forget something. But in this incident, a salafi took down the Tunisian flag ...

The Pope's Predicament

Just over ten years ago, before the illness that took his life today had sapped his body’s strength, I had the opportunity to meet with Pope Shenouda III, the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church. It was September 2001, only a matter of days after the September 11 attacks, and I was in Egypt beginning a year’s worth of dissertation research. My father had opted to travel with me, to help me settle into the rhythms of life in Cairo. I was delighted with this, not so much for the advice he could give about the year ahead, but because – as a prominent diaspora Copt – he could work his connections to secure a meeting with the Patriarch. At the time, ...

Queering the Qur’an? Sacred Ripping and the Holy Homonationalism

It may be hard to imagine that here, in the hot and humid Texas, being queer is “cool.” Believe it or not, Houston has a lesbian mayor and one of the first transgender judges in the nation. Hell, if it was not for the rest of Texas, gay marriage could possibly be legal in the land of Lawrence vs. Texas. But, the “feel-good” hegemonic queer culture in Houston is at best an epitome of American exceptionalism with an intense love for gay/queer normativity, or what Lisa Duggan has termed homonormativity. In fact, there is no shortage of queer and trans activists who care about nothing more than voting a gay politician into the office and participating in the Human Rights ...

Islamophobia For Office

Prophetic Politics: Charting a Healthy Role for Religion in Public Life

Walter Brueggemann, The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipatory Word. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters’ guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration? Secular people tend to answer an emphatic “NO” to those questions, as do most progressive religious folk. Because religious fundamentalists so often present an easy-to-caricature version of faith-based politics—even to the point of implying that God would want us to vote for certain candidates—it is tempting to want to banish all talk of the divine from political life. But a blanket claim that “religion and politics ...

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama's demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel's demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel's position was basically that Lebanon's sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where ...

The "Maspero Crime": Accounts Against the Counter-Revolution’s Power, Media, and Religion

At that point, I was alone, and so I began to walk back to Tahrir. Someone saw me tweeting and came to me. He asked me my name. So I said, “Hani Sobhi.” He then grabbed my wrists to see if I had a cross tattoo. And when he did not find one, he asked for my full name. I said, “Hani Sobhi Bushra.” He asked me if I was a Muslim or a Christian, and I said I was a Christian. Hani Bushra’s Facebook Testimony, 8:54 am, 9 October 2011 It was Sunday night, the 9th of October, when a peaceful group of Christian Egyptians marched southwards from Shubra Roundabout in northeastern Cairo to Maspero near downtown Tahrir Square. The reason for the march was a simple quest: to “make ...