Photo credit: Susan NYC

With apologies to Msrs Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe.

The first story concerns the burgeoning scene of Muslim punk, which goes by the name of Taqwacore after the novel by Michael Muhammad Knight. I posted a story about this on my Facebook a few months ago (before I’d resumed blogging), but it’s doing the rounds again for some reason. Not directly relevant to our blog, but bear with me.

I was reminded again of this while reading this article on ‘New Jews’, or “Judaism 2.0″ (more on that last in a sec). This article describes the “New” Jews (primarily Gen X-ers in their 30′s) who are determined to wear their Judaism in a way that suits them. These might include devout punk, Lesbian Jewish weddings, hip magazines or micro-breweries (“HE’BREW”). Sarah Lefton founded G-dcast, a series of weekly, downloadable animated cartoons as a way of making learning about Judaism less stuffy. I’m not sure I’d call this new Judaism “Judaism 2.0″, not only because the whole “x 2.0″ thing is so horribly daggy, but also because that term would surely suit post-Temple, Rabbinic Judaism better.

Next up we have the recent tightening of restrictions on Sabbath use of lifts by observant Jews. As Jews are not allowed to work on the Sabbath, and rabbis decided that pressing a button constitutes work, lifts in buildings used by many Jews were altered to automatically stop on every floor on the Sabbath. A recent ruling by a group of prominent Israeli rabbis, however, could change that, leaving many elderly Jews in high apartment buildings up… -stairs without a lift. The sticking point has always been whether the lift uses a sensor to gauge how many people were inside it, thus turning the lift into one big button. I’m not exactly sure why it would need to do this: surely, if it’s stopping on every floor it doesn’t matter. It couldn’t stop altogether when it’s empty, because then you’d need to press a button to call it. Unless the area outside the lift on each floor had its OWN pressure pad… Rabbis, I don’t envy you.

Lastly, we return to the “.0″s with the recent self-description of many atheists, disenfranchised with the current pack of “New Atheists”, as “Atheism 3.0″. These atheists admit there may be a place for religious belief in the world, and refuse to see it as the single source of the world’s ills. This nomenclature works slightly better than “Judaism 2.0″, although I worry about the lack of any definition of what exactly constitued “Atheism 1.0″. Can’t people think of better names for things?!

Linkography:
Kate Shellnutt ‘Young Muslims use punk to loosen their religion‘, Chicago Sun-Times (20/9/09)
Jessica Ravitz ‘“New Jews” stake claim to faith, culture‘, CNN.com (30/10/09)
Paul Vitello ‘Another Landlord Worry: Is the Elevator Kosher?’, New York Times (9/10/09)
Daniel Burke ‘Atheism 3.0 Finds a Little More Room for Belief‘, beliefnet (//09)

Image from Hossam all line at Flickr.com

Technological integration into worship is always a fascinating topic. I am not just referring to the phenomenon of worshippers commenting on communion via Twitter or Facebook, but the more supposedly mundane aspects such as audio-visual design of the space, and engineering for efficient systems of moving people. Jennifer Hattam at TreeHugger reported recently on the deployment of stuff green in mosques around the world. The article, title ‘Enlightened Mosques Switch to Energy-Saving Lights’ (enlightened – get it? Get it? Yeah, it took me a few goes too) highlighted some examples of environmental engineering that looked to make mosques greener.

Finding ways to make one’s mosque energy efficient makes sense on a number of levels; cheaper electricity bills for one, less strain on environmental resources for another, and let us not forget the politic street cred’ that comes from participating in a growing global socio-cultural hegemony that is infused with moralistic monologues and eschatological imminence (and immanence?). The dual meaning in the TreeHugger title seemed a bit too obvious to me.

What I really liked were some of the cool ideas that were being used: underfloor heating, dual-layered walls for cooling and rain-water harvesting, use of natural light. All good stuff, but it makes me wonder how halal such things are, and how that designation is gained in the light of technological innovation. Maybe that could be a future venture for TreeHugger? In any case, the jumps to other stories from the article make for interesting reading.

Jennifer Hattam, ‘Enlightened Mosques Switch to Energy-Saving Lights’, TreeHugger (05/09/09)

We’ve been told that the iPod’s earphones may damage our hearing and distract us from traffic, but now a scholar from the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo has warned that listening to recordings of the Qur’an is dangerous for the soul.

Sheik Gamal Qutb has warned that if someone listens to the Qur’an in public (presumably meaning on headphones while out in public, as I’d imagine public broadcasts of the Qur’an were something different) they are inevitably distracted, and so disrepect it. A theologian from al-Azhar, however, Ahmed as-Sayeh, countered that

“Listening to Quran in public places does not imply any carelessness,” he told al-Arabiya. “On the contrary, those who do that honor the Quran to the extent that they need to listen to it everywhere.”

This comes two years after the Saudi government banned imams from reading the Qur’an over the phone for night prayers during Ramadan.

There’s an interesting piece on the matter at ReligionDispatches, that interprets Qutb’s issue in light of Marxist theory and “passive listening”.

Hussein Rashid ‘Marxism Meets Al-Azhar: Can You Listen to the Qur’an on Tape?‘, ReligionDispatches (2/9/09)

Even lower than studying film in the first place.

The Herald continues its attempt to confuse me, this time with the story of Justin Sisely who, for whatever reason, is looking for two people willing to sell their virginity online. I can only imagine he wants to make a film about it, but what they don’t explain is why he previously used a poster of the Madonna with male genitalia scrawled on her forehead, or why he “is prepared to use an image of the prophet Muhammad” if he needs to. WHY WOULD HE NEED TO?!

apud ‘Film student on offensive in campaign to find virgin’, Sydney Morning Herald (26/7/09)

Facebook has disabled the ‘I Hate Muslims in Oz’ group from their site. This was due to its “explicit statement of hate”, rather than any sense of religious vilification. Holocaust denial groups have also been removed in the past, but only when similarly related to a message of hate.

apud AFP ‘Facebook shuts down Aussie Muslim hate group‘, Sydney Morning Herald (12/6/09)

UPDATE: Looks like the flag-wearers should have watched this:

Indonesian clerics met at the Lirboyo Islamic boarding school to discuss, among other issues, possible guidelines for Muslim Facebook users. Fearing that Facebook, Indonesia’s most popular site, may encourage “pornographic chatter”, clerics considered an edict on the matter was necessary. “The clerics think it is necessary to set an edict on virtual networking, because this online relationship could lead to lust, which is forbidden in Islam,” said Nabil Haroen from Lirboyo.

Any such edict could be endorsed by the Ulema Council, who recently published prohibitions against smoking and Yoga. Contravention by Indonesian Muslims of any such fatwa is considered a sin.

apud AP ‘Indonesian clerics want rules for Facebook‘, Sydney Morning Herald (21/5/09)

… one of the signs of the Muslim End of Days has been realised. Over-zealous bureaucrats in Egypt have mandated the wholesale slaughter of the country’s pigs to try and avoid outbreaks of Swine Flu. Of course, according to Prophecy this was supposed to be accomplished by Jesus, and accompanied by the smashing of the crosses. Still, you get the idea.

In their defence, Egypt has been struggling with Avian Flu for the last few years, so it isn’t unexpected they might be a bit worried about the latest epidemic. More cynical observers, however, have noted that the owners of the nation’s pigs are almost exclusively Coptic Christians, and suggested that President Mubarak commissioned the cull due to pressure from Islamist opposition party the Muslim Brotherhood, who completely oppose the keeping of haram pigs on “Islamic land”.

The story reached the outside world and our own fair site when video of the culls hit YouTube, and the methods employed have raised the ire of animal welfare activists. I’d rather not provide a link to the rather graphic imagery of the footage, but you’re all web-savvy kids: I’m sure you can find it yourselves. Muslim practice requires that slaughtered animals have their throats slit in an effort to minimise their suffering, but witnesses claim this is only carried out on the boars, while sows and piglets are stabbed or beaten to death. One method purportedly involved spraying them with a chemical that took 30-40 minutes to kill them.

apud AFP ‘Pig cull YouTube video sparks outrage‘, Sydney Morning Herald (18/5/09)

That was the best pun-tacular headline I could come up with. The usual apologies to all.

Finnish Muslim social site Muxlim has created a virtual world, Muxlim Pal, which is currently in open beta. Muxlim chief executive Mohamed El-Fatatry said this world is primarily for Muslims in western countries, for whom expressing their religious selves is more of an issue than for those in primarily Muslim countries.

Only 98% of members (presumably of the Muxlim social networking site rather than the new Muxilm Pal world) were said to be Muslims, with the other 2% presumably friends and interested hangers-on.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I was going to call it Jews for Jihads, but the whole Jews for Jesus thing is that they’re Christians pretending to be Jews, so I had to get the relationship right.

Dr. Ofer Grosbard, a lecturer in counselling at the University of Haifa has responded to requests from his Bedouin students to contextualise their advice for ‘traditional’ Bedouin clients in terms they will understand. One of his students, Bushra Mazarib, approached him after a lecture and pointed out that “Nothing of what you are teaching me will help when a parent may come to me and say, ‘The devil has gotten into my son.’” She commented further to CNN: “I want to explain something to parents in a language that they will understand. They don’t understand psychology, they only understand the Quran”. Grosbard thus set his students the task of combing the Qur’an for “the most educational and inspirational verses” and briefly explain their practical use.

The results have been compiled on the website Quranet which, curiously, bears the subtitle “a Bridge between Islam and the West”. But does this mean explaining western psychological terms in language traditional Muslims better understand, or explaining Islam to the West? It seems to aim to be a little of both, with one of its purposes cited as that “it both refutes various prejudices against Islam, and provides a resounding response to warped exploitation of the Quran for the justification of terror.”

Dana Rosenblatt, author of the CNN article, claims that “Some Arab media, however, urge Muslims to be wary of an ‘Israeli Web site’ that interprets the Quran to serve the ‘political agenda’ of Israel.” To whom this may refer is unknown, as Rosenblatt quickly changes tack and quotes a generally conciliatory comment from American scholar Professor Akbar Ahmed about positive relations between Islam and the rest of the world.

I was able to find one story on gulfnews.com, by Mariam Al Hakkem reporting from Riyadh. Dr Abdullah Al Mutlaq of the Senior Ulema Board in Saudi Arabia advised caution in accepting Quranic interpretation from an Israeli source: “A Muslim, who wants to abide by Islamic teachings, should not depend on this website for interpretation of the Holy Quran whatever the case”.

Conversely, there are less than conciliatory voices on the other side of the equation. Israpundit refers to the site as the “latest dhimmi excess by Israelis who should know better.”