The Atlantic: It’s Not Enough to Dismiss Islamophobia

And yet, argues Nadia Marzouki in her new book, Islam: An American Religion, anti-Islam arguments in the West have become “surprisingly standardized.” It’s “no longer possible to discuss Islam’s place in Western societies without systematically invoking a series of normative oppositions: good/bad, moderate/radical, faith/law, West/Muslim, modernity/tradition, and so on,” she writes. “For a majority of Americans and Europeans, Islam remains an opaque object that one is unable to think of in any way other than as a problem, threat, or retrograde legal code.”

It’s not enough to understand this simply as Islamophobia, argues Marzouki, who is a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She believes Islam has become a cipher in Western societies for the tough questions of secular, liberal democracies: how much to champion liberty over equality, for example, and whether legal rights should entitle Muslims to fully express their faith in public. As much as Europe and the U.S. have different histories and legal traditions, she claims, anti-Muslim groups in both places share their discomfort with these challenges. [...]

One major difference between Europe and the U.S. is that anti-Muslim arguments in the U.S. haven’t been very prominent within the Democratic Party or the left. Maybe you can find a few exceptions here and there, but broadly speaking, it’s mostly people from the right wing of the Republican Party. In Europe, some of the arguments about the fear of Islam, etc., have been endorsed by the right, but also by the left. [...]

What’s at stake is not just a hate of Islam or a hate of Muslims. It’s an unease toward the capacity of abstract language to capture their sense of being disgruntled, or being perceived as losers, or as people who have been hurt or offended. Understanding the role of emotions and affect is important, because it helps us better understand why people consider certain things sacred, like the constitution, or some territory where a mosque should be constructed. Focusing just on law is not enough to address what’s really at stake.

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Al Jazeera: How Germany used Islam during World War I

The plan, a convenient corollary of the German-Ottoman alliance, was formally launched by Turkish Sultan Mehmed V shortly after the start of the war. From a mosque in Constantinople, the Sultan declared Britain, France and Russia the enemies of Islam, calling upon the Muslim subjects of those countries and their colonies to resist their oppressors.

According to the fatwa that was subsequently issued, any Muslim that engaged in war against the Ottomans would have to pay the highest penalty.

In the same year, two prisoner of war camps were built in Wunsdorf and Zossen - 7km away. Wunsdorf's Halbmondlager (Half Moon Camp) - so called because of the high concentration of Muslims - held about 5,000 prisoners at its peak, while Zossen had more than 12,000. [...]

Despite the calculated efforts, only a small proportion of the Muslim prisoners of war ended up fighting for the German side. At least 1,100 people from Tatarstan - now part of Russia - 1,084 Arabs and 49 Indians defected. [...]

Wunsdorf has played a strategic role in many of Germany's key historic moments. Between 1939 and 1945, the Wehrmacht High Command was located nearby and from the end of World War II until 1994, Wunsdorf served as the headquarters of the High Command of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. With 35,000 Soviet troops stationed there, along with their families, the area came to be known as "Little Moscow" by local residents.

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The Conversation: How religion rises – and falls – in modern Australia

In the 2011 Census, Australia became at the same time both less religious and more religious. While a rising number declared they have “no religion” (22%), the number declaring a religion also increased significantly. This was partly due to 17% fewer people taking the option of not responding.

The declaration of “no religion” is becoming particularly evident among young people – the so-called millennials. In the 2011 Census, nearly 30% of Australians between 25 and 34 declared that they had no religion. [...]

Increasing proportions of young people have been raised by parents who declare they have no religion. In the UK, the likelihood of children of religious parents being religious themselves is about 50%. But those raised in non-religious households are very unlikely to take up religion. Similar figures are likely for Australia. [...]

According to the NCLS, 28% of Australians claim to “have had (and another 25% believe it is possible to have) a mystical or supernatural experience about which they have no doubts about its reality”. Given that 11% claim to attend religious services once a week (and 7% once a month), supernatural experiences are not limited to religious organisations.

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Motherboard: Why Bottled Water Is Insane

Bottled water as a concept has been visible for a very long time, of course, and most histories of the phenomenon mark the introduction of Perrier in 1976 as the genesis of modern bottled water. It wasn't until the mid-'90s, however, that bottled water became everyday and, you know, for the common folks. Those of us that remember this period are lucky enough to have witnessed one of the most insane events in consumer history, when the soda industry figured out how to sell the same thing in bottles that people already had piped into their houses. [...]

There is also Nestle, which sits at the cheaper end of the "all natural" bottled water market, and which is helping to illustrate the general insanity of bottled water quite well right now in Colorado. In this case, marketing equals an unceasing stream of semi-trucks driving between a series of wells and a bottling plant in Denver, about three hours away. One truck pulls up, fills, and drives on, to be immediately replaced by another empty truck, and so on. In the process, they are draining an aquifer that feeds the Arkansas River. [...]

Meanwhile, aquifers are drying up, fast; in the U.S., groundwater levels are falling faster than at any other time in the past century. Pollution is hurting the supplies we have. In other places, fights over water can look a lot more brutal than shouting at a town hall. Winning the impeding water wars, which will be between countries but, even more so, against profits, will involve staring down the basic, absurd assumption that water is a thing that we must pay a lot for, and for a lot more than just money.

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Politico: A tale of two Slavic strongmen

The calculating ex-KGB Russian has dismissed his Belarusian counterpart — who was the director of a state pig farm during the Soviet era — as a treacherous buffoon. And he hasn’t forgiven Lukashenko for his refusal to fall in line with other ex-Soviet leaders and recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. (Lukashenko called it a “bad precedent” instead.)

The Belarusian has also turned down Russian requests for an air force base in Belarus and closer military cooperation, and has increasingly tilted to the West to diversify the country’s economy, which has suffered from the economic downturn in sanctions-hit Russia, its main trading partner.

Putin didn’t take well to Lukashenko’s decision to grant visa-free travel to Europeans and Americans. He recently reintroduced border controls between the two nations, even though they’re part of a “Union State,” and cut back on supplies of subsidized gas and oil that power the Belarusian economy — an agreement known as “gas for kisses” — thus jeopardizing the country’s fragile recovery. [...]

Meanwhile, the Belarusian leader’s showdown with Moscow has escalated. In an emotional seven-and-a-half-hour speech during his annual press conference in Minsk in February, Lukashenko claimed the Kremlin had “Belarus by the throat” over concerns that the country “would move closer to the West.” He even threatened to give up cheap Russian gas if necessary. Lukashenko’s message to Putin was clear: I’m no lapdog and I’m willing to risk confrontation to safeguard my independence.

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Broadly: Witches Allegedly Stole Penises and Kept Them as Pets in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, witches were thought to have various magical dick-ruining capabilities, the most sinister of which is the ability to make the sex organ vanish entirely. According to Smith, the Malleus Maleficarum details three specific case studies in which witches were said to have magically deprived men of their penises. The first two simply involve men having their genitals hidden by some magical illusion—witches "can take away the male organ," Heinrich Kramer writes, "not indeed by despoiling the human body of it, but by concealing it with some glamour." [...]

Gonad-bearing flora were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. In a 2010 article published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, historian Johan J. Mattelaer states, "Between the end of the 13th century and the early 16th century, the phallus tree was quite a phenomenon." Penis trees flourished throughout Europe, according to his research: A 14th century French manuscript contains two images of nuns harvesting penises from trees and tucking them into their robes; a wood carving from the early 15th century currently kept at a museum in Germany depicts a woman casually plucking penises while her lover peruses a vulva tree; and a decorative badge found in the Netherlands "shows a couple making love under a phallus tree, possibly being watched by a voyeur."

In 2000, archaeologists uncovered a particularly impressive penis tree specimen: a massive mural from the 13th century, located in Tuscany. It depicts a tree covered in male sex organs ("It is indeed a phallus tree!" Mattelaer notes jovially), all of which were "disproportionately large and... clearly in an aroused state." By the noble plant's roots stand eight women, two of whom appear to be fighting over a penis and one of whom is trying to knock one off a branch using a stick. Beside them is another woman who appears to be mostly uninvolved—but who, upon closer inspection, as Mattelaer notes, "has one of the fruits of the tree protruding from her bottom." George Ferzoco, the director of the Center for Tuscan studies, has argued that the mural constitutes "the earliest depiction in art of women acting as witches," citing ancient Tuscan folklore about witches keeping penises captive in nests.

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Haaretz: Advice From 770 Eastern Parkway

Menachem Begin was the perfect leader for the last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem M. Schneerson, who died in 1994. Schneerson, who settled in Brooklyn after escaping from France during the Holocaust, waited 29 years for an Israeli candidate for prime minister who, instead of asking “what will the goyim say?” said “we strive to do what is good and right for the Jews.” Begin consulted Schneerson frequently, even after becoming premier. However, Schneerson took issue with Begin’s decision to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, in exchange for a peace treaty. Without blinking an eye, the rebbe demanded that Begin resign if he was unable to withstand the pressure to sign a peace treaty. [...]

They were all his followers. Sometimes rebuking, sometimes advising, the faces change but the path to 770 Eastern Parkway — the world headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement — continues to be well-worn. When Jacob Perry, now a Knesset member for Yesh Atid, was the head of the Shin Bet security service, he held a long meeting with Schneerson. The rebbe sent Joseph Ciechanover, the legal adviser for the defense establishment, to Moshe Dayan to tell him to conquer Damascus during the Yom Kippur War. The head of military intelligence, Aharon Yariv, shared classified army plans with Schneerson. When Netanyahu was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, he was a regular guest in the rebbe’s court and consulted with him many times. “I see the rebbe as a modern-day prophet. ... the things the rebbe told me about the need to stand up for the truth guide me everywhere,” Netanyahu said in an interview for the book. [...]

The Lubavitcher rebbe believed he could do more for the Jewish people from Brooklyn than he could if he were in Israel. He had a right to his opinion, of course, but the Zionist idea argued that the greatest benefit to Jews is to be found here. People living in Israel, not Chabad emissaries in Alaska, paid the terrible price of the wars with Egypt. It is easy to sit in New York and demand war. Chabad is a wonderful movement. If it wants to be part of life in Israel, the place to do it is Kfar Chabad. Let the advice from New York go to Bill De Blasio.

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Haaretz: Israel Places Palestinian Leader Marwan Barghouti in Solitary Over Prisoners' Hunger Strike

The prisoners are demanding improved conditions, a change to visiting policies and specific requests such as the installation of public telephones in the cell blocks. Some of the demands involve a return to policies that were in effect before the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in 2006 and the abduction and murder of three Jewish teens in the West Bank in 2014, when Israel withdrew prisoner privileges as a way of increasing pressure on Hamas. Most of the demands, however, are new, such as the closure of the Israel Prison Service clinic in favor of bringing prisoners who need medical care to a hospital. The prisoners are also demanding an end to detention without trial and of solitary confinement.  [...]

In an op-ed published in The New York Times, Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for murder in Israel, explained why they have gone on hunger strike. Barghouti accused Israel of conducting "mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners," and said that a hunger strike is "the most peaceful form of resistance available" against these abuses. [...]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas published a statement supporting the hunger-striking prisoners and called on the international community to intervene before their medical condition deteriorates. The prisoners are at the top of the Palestinian leader's agenda, the statement said.

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Geoawesomeness: Map showing 500 years of Virgin Mary sightings

According to the text Virgin Mary barely speaks in the New Testament, but her image and legacy are found and celebrated around the world. The Cult of Mary is often linked to supernatural apparitions and miracle healings. There were over 2,000 sightings of the Virgin Mary claimed since A.D. 40. In the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church instituted a strict verification process of miracles. The process of investigation covers many aspects of each apparition, including the ‘authenticity’ and mental stability of the seer. To be worthy of belief and church support, apparitions must be deemed miraculous with a high degree of certainty and in line with church doctrine, and found to have had a positive impact. In fact only 16 of them have being sanctioned as true miracles.

The article is summarised with this cool infographic showing where the sightings have been reported, and how they’ve been classified by the church. The map is nicely designed and complemented by a timeline were each apparition has been marked.

see the graphs