Over at ISLAMiCommentary, TIF contributor Mbaye Lo sees a clear disconnect and calls for a retrospective analysis in the wake of the furor created by the film Innocence of Muslims.
Posts Tagged ‘protests’
May 11th, 2012
Political and religious groups clash in Bonn
posted by Phillip QuinteroLast Saturday, a regional political rally in the German city of Bonn turned violent as Salafists, followers of a conservative and literalist approach to Islam, fought with police protecting a political demonstration by the right-wing German group, Pro-North Rhine-Westphalia.
December 12th, 2011
Faith and the Occupy movement: What would Jesus do?
posted by Wei ZhuFrom very early in the movement, spirituality and faith have played a role in the Occupy movement. Religious observances began happening at Occupy Wall Street and around the country, such as the Muslim Jumu’ah and the Jewish Kol Nidre. Religious leaders have come out in support of the Occupy movement, and its social vision, especially in the wake of the wave of crackdowns by local governments on the movement in November.
October 12th, 2011
#OccupyWallSt, spirituality, and faith
posted by John D. BoyOn September 17, protesters heeded the call to occupy Wall Street and set up camp in a semi-public park in downtown Manhattan’s Financial District that is once again known as Liberty Plaza. In the roughly three weeks since the Occupy Wall Street protests began, several commentators have begun reflecting on the place of faith in the movement. The meditation area on Liberty Plaza is only the most overt of the influences of faith or spirituality on the protest movement.
August 23rd, 2011
World Youth Day reassessed
posted by Amanda KaplanTwo writers at the The Guardian enter into the conversation about this year’s World Youth Day and the public reaction that accompanied Pope Benedict’s visit to Madrid. Andrew Brown asks why the public appears not to recognize the Church’s accomplishment, citing the role of the media in creating a narrow narrative of the event, while Miguel-Anxo Murado turns the discussion to politics, claiming that the protests were perhaps not as successful as it may have appeared.
March 11th, 2011
Asecular revolution
posted by Hussein Ali Agrama
Why have I chosen the term “asecular,” and not, say, “non-secular” or “post-secular,” to describe the power manifested by these protests? The term “non-secular” is too easily confused with the notion of the religious. And unlike post-secularity, asecularity is not a temporal marker. It allows for the possibility that asecularity has, in different forms, always been with us, even from within the traditions from which state secularity arises. Explorations of post-secularity typically try to identify the emergence of new norms. Such attempts fail to recognize that the process of identifying and distinguishing secular from non-secular norms is part of what secularism is, and that this process is integral to its power. In contrast, the term asecularity specifies a situation not where norms are no longer secular, but where the questions against which such norms are adduced and contested as answers are no longer seen as necessary.
March 2nd, 2011
Missed signals
posted by Jessica PolebaumAt Muftah, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd reflects on how American observers may have overlooked the potential for political uprising, and eventual revolution, in Egypt.
February 22nd, 2011
The power of a new political imagination
posted by Malika Zeghal
The Tunisian revolution, as a revolution of ordinary people, inspired the demonstrations in Egypt, leading to Mubarak’s fall. It has opened the Tunisian people’s political imagination, which had been foreclosed by the elites in power, with the support of Tunisia’s European and American allies. This new narrative of change through popular revolution has expressed what was previously impossible to say openly: that a radical regime change is necessary and must lead to individual freedom (both economic and political), political representation, and government accountability. The self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi made manifest the economic and political plight of the Tunisian youth and the people’s distrust of a state that had humiliated them, repressed all dissent, and practiced corruption at all levels since the country became independent in 1956. Tunisians and Egyptians have expressed their desire to become citizens, rather than subjects, of their states.
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