Africa
Bombed-Out Jesus
It’s not until I look at the blank space where his face would be that I see how white he was.
Do You Feel Mutilated?
Sudden activity on an old front in the worldwide circumcision wars: Africa. While two legislators in California announced efforts to ban the San Francisco circumcision-ban ballot measure, The Atlantic reported on a Zimbabwean campaign to encourage grown men and boys to get circumcised. The point of the Zimbabwean effort is to slow the spread of HIV. As…
Black African Rabbi Aims High
Matthew Fishbane of Tablet magazine has a great two-part long piece of narrative journalism about the Abayudaya of Uganda, who have been Jewish since a colonial-era chieftain decided to follow the five books of Moses. A century later, a descendant of those African Jews became a rabbi and ran for parliament. Fishbane joined him on…
Notes from the Tangled Anglican Web
What the schism over sexuality has to do with the colonial legacy in Africa.
“Liquid Faith,” African Style
Duncan Scrymgeour just wrote to us from Los Angeles with a fascinating addendum to Monday’s article: I read “Liquid Faith” by Mark Bergen with profound interest. I noticed similar movement among Latino immigrants in the largest center of that community here in Los Angeles. I published my research in 1996 in New Trends and Developments…
The Christian Right’s Heart for Africa
I’ll be joining African gay activists on Canada’s morning affairs show, “The Current,” tomorrow morning at 8:30 am eastern to discuss Uganda’s soon-to-be-law “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009,” which will impose the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” — queer sex with disabled people or anyone under 18, or any sex a queer HIV-positive person engages in. Anyone…
Say You’re One of Them
Buddha-killer Scott Korb has written about everything from hunting to basketball in his search for faith. Now he takes a look at Nigerian-born Jesuit Uwem Akpan’s new book of stories, Say You’re One of Them, for America, the national Catholic weekly. Akpan has long wanted to write about Africa’s children, and now he has, facing…
Jesus Plus Nothing, Minus Somalia
How Christian fundamentalism helped turn Somalia into the next staging ground for Islamic radicalism.
Big in Somalia
Online Somali pirates have hijacked my May Harper’s feature, “Jesus Killed Mohammed,” excerpted “exclusively” (no more) here on Killing the Buddha. A publication called Garowe has re-published the piece — without my permission! Break out the sound cannons. Actually, I’m delighted that Garowe has republished the excerpt. It’s almost always a pleasure when someone borrows…
Happy Ethiopian New Year!
Yes, we know that it is also Rosh Hashanah, but we’ve published so much already about the Jewish High Holidays that we thought it was time to blow another new year’s horn. That it happens to Ethiopia’s big day is convenient because it gives us a chance to tip our hat to some music that…