Yesterday, I was riding on the public bus, on my way to visit a very good friend of mine, and a pair of Mormon guys got on the bus. They were wearing the white shirts with the name tags—missionaries. One of them came back and sat near me, and started up a conversation with me. Now, I am from the Southern United States, the land of Christian evangelism, so I immediately knew what his goal was. We started by talking about the weather and the landscape of Boston and Massachusetts versus that of Utah (where he was from) and the South.

I spent eleven hours at work today (and last Thursday) literally being poked dozens of times with a sharp object.  By medical students.  They’re always really nice about it.  Sometimes, though, it feels like my own personal cross between Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (movie) and any typical Philip K. Dick scenario.

Tomorrow I’m off to Minneapolis (or was it St. Paul?), Minnesota, for Recently Deceased Uncle #2.  And to meet this Moor, Rashid al-Din. 

German Judge and Legal Orientalism
By  Mohammad Fadel

Originally Posted on Eteraz.Org

The Friday New York Times reported that a German judge denied a Moroccan woman’s request for an expedited divorce from her Moroccan husband – despite the apparently undisputed evidence that the husband had repeatedly abused her – on the grounds that such conduct is “common” in Morocco and that the “Koran . . . sanctions such physical abuse.” 

(Originally written: 2/25/07)

Let’s be blunt: I want stuff to happen, and I’ll generally do my darndest to make it happen—as long as the means are morally permissible, of course. Three examples will suffice.

Mohammad Fadel and I had an extended e-mail conversation on equality between men and women in the Qur’an. Fadel is a member of the faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. We are pleased to have him on as one of our new contributors to the site. He has been working on finding "best practices" in the established legal tradition to resolve gender matters in the contemporary North American context.

I have always understood that while the Qur’an provides for moral equality between men and women, there is no legal equality between men and women, not to mention the free and the enslaved. Moral equality implies that no matter the distinct social heirarchies, all human social roles are equally valuable before God. However one might respond to the fact of legal inequality in the Qur’an, it seems to me that there is no way around the fact of it. Fadel disagreed with me. It turns out I was confusing analysis of legal history and legal thinking itself. Kecia Ali's new book Sexual Ethics and Islam is a superb example of analysis of legal history. She is not trying to make law herself, but rather give an analysis of how law has been made and on what assumptions. Fadel is making analysis of legal thought that makes an explicit legal argument for one position over another. So while Ali's analysis demonstrates that legal equality in the Qur'an has a contested matter and why, Fadel's analysis shows that it should not have to be given our legal options.

Using this Qur’an search engine:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/simple.html

Faith = 70 verses
Believe = 714 verses
Unbelievers = 120 verses
Believers = 144
Unbelief = 28
Disbelief = 5
Doubt = 53
Belief = 6
Total = 1140

The resulting verses may be read at:

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/quranicfaithanddoubt.htm

Using this Bible search engine:

I was just reading Ali Eteraz' excellent post on Muslim Polygamy in North America.  I responded there, and I'll repeat it here:

I have been offered marriage as a second wife.  It is a girlfriend kind of thing.  The idea is he comes and sees me, we have a great weekend, he leaves and takes his dirty underwear with him.  But he takes his dirty underwear back to his first wife who then has to wash them along with all the other laundry and care for all the detritus of their lives including the burden of not being enough for him no matter what she does.  What ass would even think that a woman with any self-respect would do that to another woman?!  Urgh.  I was talking to Hedonist about this the other day.  You know how much she has posted on this issue.

Please enjoy this in the vein of the fractured fairy-tales once seen on “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” In other words, this is intended to be humorous yet revealing a deeper truth.

Since we have been talking about celibacy, I thought I would discuss the promise of the “72” Virgins in paradise. I’ll let someone else address this in terms of objectification of women, the traditional scholarship on the matter, and of course its problematic heteronormativity. Here I would like to ask a more obvious question. Virgins are not likely to be very good in bed. Why would any man want to have sex eternally with some beautiful young things if their responsiveness is likely to be limited to timid or apprehensive surprise and fumbling? Why is this tempting?

200 innocent civilians were killed in Mumbai a few days ago. I'm re-posting this old article of mine in response. -Z.

Some of the most successful political movements in the twentieth century have been based upon the principle of non-violence. However, Islamic political movements have remained relatively unaffected by widespread ideological moves towards non-violence, as these were generally developed in non-Muslim contexts; Mahatma Gandhi's peaceful resistance against the British, for example, was never integrated into a Muslim religious framework. In the post 9/11 geopolitical scenario, however, it is important to remember that Islam, like all great religious traditions, contains a fundamental message of peace and tolerance; one which can in fact be developed theologically into a full-blown Muslim theory of non-violence. In examining this issue, first we need to look at particular Qur'anic passages which support non-violence. Then we may try to understand some of the historical reasons why Muslim ideals of non-violence have not been realized.