Category Archives: Religion

FTAC: On the Secular Roof: No Compulsion

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Religion

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From the Awesome Conversation, A Note Placed with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (Facebook)

Because there is no compulsion (is there?), the modern secular guaranty is a roof beneath which all faiths and religious practices may be engaged by choice peacefully and securely.

By the numbers, our planet supports fewer than 7,000 living language cultures and approximately 4,200 separable religions and related sects.

For the blood thirsty, religion may be regarded as a gift, for wars related to creed or dogma favored by one powerful house or another (x clan, family, or tribe or by caliphate, kingdom, or empire) tend to be the least resolvable drivers of wars: nothing has ever been proved or disproved by them. For the most part, the employment of religious rhetoric by the powerful traces most of all to the want of personal aggrandizement and the presence of messianic ambition, and limitless greed.

Today’s post-Reformation Europe supports a dozen historical monarchies, all but two of them constitutional monarchies tempered by empowered and popularly elected legislatures and courts independent of churches once regarded as all powerful (there are no compassionate, democratic, humanist, or liberal theocracies. All theocracies remain deeply medieval, primitive, and suffocating, and especially so where subscription (loyalty with payment extracted) has been compelled.

One Earth and Our Own Little Worlds

The Taliban, among other of the world’s absolutists, scolds, and scourges will learn, whether they like it or not, that modern complexity in financing and trade demands ever higher levels of human cooperation and integration across cultural, economic, and geopolitical boundaries. The lone ancient bureaucrat with his snicker and his hand out for the bribe that lifts the gate he guards has now the power befitting make-believe trolls. Really getting things done — big things: accession to favorable security organizations; extensive infrastructure creation, re-engineering, and repair (after war, especially, but obsolescence over time demands the same regenerative efforts everywhere), ports, transnational communications — require good relationships with a whole world. Otherwise — and examples are numerous (start with Zimbabwe and work backward through the world’s dictatorships) — one’s people may be reduced to eating dust and worms.

For those with the full spread on a table in a palace, where’s the worry?

Well, history has a way of devouring those who exploit as well as starve their own.

Today’s responsible government needs must become a partner in the achievement of modern standards contributing to its own prosperity and stability — or the same may choose to remain heavily guarded in its keep and otherwise a vulgar backwater demeaned and reviled worldwide.

Political leaders may have today the puzzle of perpetuating the strength of their own cultures and families and related self-concepts while participating in the development of complex global diplomatic and legal systems bearing on the practical business and technology systems intended to secure a global tomorrow in which the earth and all her cargo may thrive.

Qualities of Living — The State of the State

War is easy.

It is living — and managing for the living — that has become challenging.

I believe for avarice, greed, and vanity, failed and failing states — generally absolute power systems that grind against their own constituents as well as the grain of humanity as well as decaying societies either disinterested in or incapable of damping the rise of their own fascistic elements — fail across measurable dimensions. Absolute and corrupt or decadent powers have despoiled their own environments and societies mightily in the cause of their own glorification. The same have produced a barbarism wondrous to behold and often beyond the bounds of any collective natural or normal human tolerance.

As I’ve written about Qualities of Living (QOLs) before and may come to dwell on the same as a principle for global political, practical, and spiritual competition — who would live best x conditions x population x area-squared? — I’ll reprint here the outline from August 25 this year –>

QOL: Qualities of Living

Biological: Environmental and Human Health

Financial: Actualizing, Beyond Basic, Individual and Family Sufficiency

Psychological: Dignifying with High Degrees of Freedom, Positive Outlook, Potential for Fulfillment, Good Self-Concept, Reliable Community and Personal Security

Spatial: Bases and Boundaries x Person x Family x Clan x Tribe x Nation x Ethnic x Transnational Cultures / Defenses and Retreats

Spiritual: Broad Awareness, Consciousness, Conscience x Comprehension of Community and Personal Place in Time

We may each have our separable dreams — but why not with clean air and water and good soil while in pursuit of contentment, place, and security?

Universally: may we and will we do that much for one another without reference to cultural or political identification and location?

Why not while we dream our dreams do so within the bounds of secured community and personal spaces?

Why not for each person with futures dreamed that may be in part accomplished, comfortable,and enlivening set and sustain the stage for positive accomplishment?

Accentuate Good; Diminish Evil

How good may we be across our species’ one biological platform: Earth?

And how rotten?

The Taliban in pursuit of absolute obedience has made a great to-do of burqa and hijab . . . but are not the virtues desired actually modesty and piety?

As an American of Jewish descent, I would not (yet, though sorely tempted) think of myself as an atheist: I am neither that brave nor cocksure. I would however suggest as virtues worthy of individual consideration and contemplation of possession without religious reference, the following: compassion; courage, empathy; fairness; foresight; fortitude, integrity; patience; temperance.

Worthy of appreciation and occasional experience but better served by diminishment over time: avarice; dishonesty; gluttony; greed; hubris; hypocrisy.

Put another way (more parallel and less awkward): have we — or just our solitary selves — compassion, courage, empathy, fairness, foresight, fortitude, integrity, and patience in all we do with ourselves and with others?

And if and when less noble and we find ourselves avaricious, controlling, corrupt, criminal, dishonest, fanatical, gluttonous, greedy, full of hubris, and hypocritical, should we not wish to have been by character and ethical and moral quality better?

One may ask what may be the balance within as well as politically and socially, for it may be that balance — that mixture in personal and communal or tribal character — that becomes the atmosphere in which we choose to reside or may be doomed to wander.

Related Online

Gannon, Kathy. “Taliban replace ministry for women with ‘virtue’ authorities.” AP News, September 18, 2021.

Lawrenz, Jürgen. “Universal virtues?” Ask A Philosopher, September 1, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Global QOL (Qualities of Living).” BackChannels, August 25, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Globalization: A Short List”. Conflict-BackChannels, June 4, 2020.

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Yeganeh Torbati. “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Reuters Investigates, November 11, 2013.

Wikipedia. “Environmental issues in Iran”.

Wikipedia. “Environmental Issues in Russia”.

Wikipedia. “List of religions and spiritual traditions”.

Hamlet had in part the experience of the medieval world, a most treacherous political and social space in time. Well, here is our still early 21st Century, and we may ask whether life must be or should be as horrifying as it may have been then.

Whether in Moscow or in Washington (or Beijing) – the three almost Orwellian anchoring points in global security — Big Defense and related “protection” rackets gin up a lot money, the perception of threat driving economies and societies in part or whole, but here one may wonder what if the world’s more apprehending, forward-looking, and good natured souls simply moved to address greater global challenges, leaving the dictators, extremists, hotheads, and malignant narcissists (“MaligNarcs” here) to wallow around a while longer in their own fantasies while they themselves become further displaced by time.

–33–

FTAC: Change: Medieval –> Modern

06 Saturday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion

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From the Awesome Conversation

One theme is change and has to do with outgrowing old ways and adopting new ones . . . but on a civilizational level rather than personal; and the other may involved Moscow’s perfidy, if that, in efforts to encourage and sustain the feudal and tribal political and social arrangements and identities that account for the brutality and corruption of dictatorships attached to cultures left behind in geopolitical time. The 9/11 crews, for example, were still fighting the “crusader west”.

Related Online: Anachronisms, Rivers in Time, and Time Bubbles

If Time were a Surface, one where cultures and religions, among other things, have their wellsprings — and boisterous young years — and their deltas — with years fading into abandonment, one could map multiple lines, start to finish, for the gods, tribes, kingdoms, and states — and the attitudes, beliefs, and prayers and rituals once embraced.

The three pieces cited below may at first seem disconnected, but each has to do with recovering or sustaining something installed — conflicts, ideas, relationships — in the past and no longer quite so necessary to the stewardship of Earth and the survival of our species (with the exception of diminishing our numbers with fire).

Harrod, Andrew. “Craig Considine: Islam’s Muhammad Shall Overcome Racism.” Jihad Watch, February 2, 2021.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Sheth, Sonam, Skye Gould, and Grace Panetta. “What we know about Paul Manafort’s connections to Russia.” Business Insider, August 1, 2018.

Above and in the order presented: a contemporary Constantine despoils the syncretic pablum that would diminish a long-standing rivalry with Muhammad’s troops; an explorer on the East-West Sea (a place in Time) suggests Zawahiri’s strings have been pulled by Moscow; and, yes, there was collusion but to be found in relationships and activities beneath them, not in deals.

So, for the future, how may Christian zealots and Islamist fanatics reach their deltas?

Well, they might wear themselves out while having made careers of their conversation — why stop today or tomorrow or in the next 35 years? The quests of each have become institutions — for as long as each may open wallets — and there’s money to be made defending and passing along dogma irregardless of its relevance to other than itself.

As for “authoritarians” or “political absolutists” — the criminals of politics past and future — they’re snagging money in their maneuvers — and most ruin their surrounds while aggrandizing and prettying themselves.

“Anachronisms” would seem things no longer fit to contemporary circumstance and concern.

“Rivers in Time”, as suggested, would be the channels carved by something young at one time — energetic, full, and moving heaven and earth — and later no longer strong but diminished and dispersed.

“Time Bubbles”?

In such Regions in Time we collectively but separately sustain and replay old battles, stubbornly stick to our guns, and confidently believe we’re getting somewhere while going nowhere until one party or the other — or both — find ruin and leave their children or others to find them in history a page or a footnote or not vanquished but vanished.

–33–

FTAC: Endemic Russian Anti-Semitism — A Note

01 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Middle East, Northern Europe, Politics, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia

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Nazism inflicted history’s most horrendous crimes against Jews. But Germany has by no means been history’s top purveyor of global antisemitism.

That distinction goes to Russia, which spread antisemitism more widely and durably.

Heinze, Eric. “Russia is the global leader in Jew-hate.” The JC. February 24, 2017.

Emphasis added to the above quotation from Eric Heinze’s analysis in The JC.

“Rise of the Rus” — and the End of the Khazar Kingdom: Excerpt with Reference

Rise of Rus

Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled the region around Novgorod. The Rus’ Khaganate, an early Rus polity in northwestern Russia, was probably heavily influenced by the Khazars. The Rus’ regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas; in one such raid, the Khagan is said to have given his assent on the condition that the Rus’ give him half of the booty. In addition, the Khazars allowed the Rus to use the trade route along the Volga River. This alliance was apparently fostered by the hostility between the Khazars and Arabs. At a certain point, however, the Khazar connivance to the sacking of the Muslim lands by the Varangians led to a backlash against the Norsemen from the Muslim population of the Khaganate. The Khazar rulers closed the passage down the Volga for the Rus’, sparking a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler Joseph wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration of Khazar relations with the Rus: “I have to wage war with them, for if I would give them any chance at all they would lay waste the whole land of the Muslims as far as Baghdad.”

The Rus warlords Oleg of Novgorod and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and other related works on the history of the Eastern Slavs.

Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city: “The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch.”

“Khazars”. Wikispeedia. McGill University.

The Roman Empire had never been Europe’s only organizing power.

The Germanic tribes, the Norse, the Mongols, and many others had been crossing that landscape for political community, trade, and war for centuries. However, it appears to have been the Varangians — descendants of the Vikings — who corrupted the Turkic Jewish Khazar, and when the protective kingdom thought better of looting some of its own villages (Muslim) in concert with the Varangians (and sharing the loot), the Varangians made war on the Khazar and destroyed the kingdom. Legends about that warfare — and the Jews — MAY have floated across northern, central, and eastern Europe for generations. Combined with Christian supersessionary ambitions for subscription and the elimination of Judaism as a contemporary religion, the seeds for Russian (and Greek Orthodox) anti-Semitism may have flourished.

Posted to YouTube by Kings and Generals, November 28, 2019. Note of Arab Muslim incursion into Europe: “. . . if the Khazars had lost, the whole history of Europe might have been very different” (4:39).

Today (RT, 2015) –>

Related Reading

Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Nicholls, William. Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate. Northvale, New Jersey, London: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1995.

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Premier: Ibtidah Education News & Views

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Pakistan, Political Psychology, Religion

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Posted to YouTube December 29, 2020

On Facebook and on YouTube, Ibtidah (The Beginning), the presence appears to represent the modern argument for intellectual freedom and integrity in states in which politics have been bound to religion and the state and others control education in the cause of medieval intellectual enslavement.

Personal Note on the Issue of Education in Transitioning Medieval Societies

I shared this note with the editor of Ibtidah —

Broad spectrum of choice should yield toward reason in the dissemination and uptake of information, but as some societies remain medieval in relation to power and worldviews, the medieval within societies may choose to cling to what becomes with greater knowledge simply archaic information. That doesn’t help anyone and least of all fanatical adherents to reactionary political or religious dogma.

Our species boasts the possession of about 4,300 religions with atheism quite low in percentage against believers in God or gods. Having become conscious as human (see Genesis chapters two and three as depicted in the Tenach and read without presumptions), we appear to have come equipped with imagination and moral sense that reliably, far more than less, extends into metaphysics. If we hadn’t, we would handle bodies — or perhaps presence — as we do animal nuisances and trash. That we don’t speaks to greater consciousness in the way of awareness and self-awareness: within our separable cultures, we wish children to be born and ourselves married and buried in customary ways fit to sustained cultural and social precepts.

With such ways, we take cultural form.

We may even believe ourselves beautiful by doing so.

🙂

By comparison, science may be crude in its marriage with reality and practical issues, but given the want of a compassionate modern world, the accurate conveyance of scientific information becomes all the more important for the broad and broadly distributed services we may bring to ourselves globally.

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For a Moment, All Were Jewish

19 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/%C3%9Altima_Cena_-_Da_Vinci_5.jpg

From the (Still) Awesome Conversation:

I may note that the Jewish Liberation Story — the Exodus from Egypt — has stood signal as God’s affront to human power for almost 6,000 years. In that narrative, God commands Moses while having at the same time control of Pharaoh. While Jews treat Moses with reverence, none ever conflate or confuse Moses with God (he was lucky to have been rescued from among the reeds; spoke with a stutter or lisp (I think — he was most imperfect); and seemed to need a sidekick for courage. Moses was . . . merely human. He didn’t part the waters: God did.

Jesus, rabbi; the first Christians; was it really a Seder?

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/was-jesus-last-supper-a-seder/

BackChannels will leave the gathering and weighing of history’s slim evidence to the curious, but as depicted by da Vinci, inspired by The Bible, and inscribed now in the intellectual awareness and evolution of mankind, The Last Supper changed the character of the world.

Here’s “the rest of the story” — at least about the painting.

–33–

Judaism and Jewishness – A Light Response to the Pure

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Philosophy, Religion

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Perhaps it’s time that grinds away at religious cohorts and their unity in thought, both dividing communities while also distilling and isolating what will come to consider itself the authentic, core, real, traditional, true community in spirit and behavior.

Here time might beg old questions, lawful, spiritual, practical: who is a Jew?

Who among Jews would the righteous pure evict?

What proportion — as Jews are a small community by numbers, how many Jews would the traditional, the Orthodox, consider . . . Jewish?

The secular principle may encourage religion at each his own expense: we are free to sustain belief and practices as we see fit privately and on our own dime. That’s not going to work in any neo-theocratic or theocratic environment in which the majority-something (all states have a “majority-something” – or a powerful minority) needs must defend a religiously codified image of organizing ethical and moral principles.

Are “true believers” (everywhere) medieval and reformers modern?

Are the believers (everywhere) the good and the reformers irreversibly decadent?

In the end and whatever the ramifications, all of our decisions — taking place in each separated mind — are private and privately reasoned and motivated — and time x God, Nature, and the Universe + Social Surrounds have their influence.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jewish/Maimonides-13-Principles-of-Faith.ht

https://www.aish.com/jl/h/cc/48955721.htm

Nature over long time encourages diversity / experimentation; we humans, especially with philosophy and religion, have made a competition out of differentiation (and “experimentation”, God only knows).

Earth’s Living Language Inventory: fewer than 7,000.
N Religions Extant: 4,200 estimated.

Our geopolitical boundaries, which may be as small as a community around a single church, mosque, or temple, really do help us be what we consider ourselves as community tradition, experience, God, intuition, learning, practical survival, and reason have made us. In the realm of embraced and enthused believe, the social set may be as small as a band (truly, music), a band (tribal warrior subset), or cult or as large, of course, as a transnational ethnic, political, or religious enterprise.

Inspiration for the post: a defense of traditional male-privileged access to Israel’s holy Western and the intrusion — and degradation of tradition — symbolized by the modern feminist Women of the Wall who intend as Jewish women to do everything that Jewish men have done traditionally by way of the express permit of God, so believed or others given for themselves to do. The patriarchal culture than has it’s “little lady” insult built into it, so from the modern perspective looking backward through time, the closest encounter with God through prayer must be for men (who are clean: free of menstruation) — and, “little lady, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

😦

As evolutionary as the cultivation and transforming of conscience, empathy, and language may be, tribal identities worldwide and their ways have persistence through time even though time — like water — has always its carving, eroding, shaping work busy at changing the face of humanity.

Partial of “Western Wall Before Sunset” by Antonina Reshef, 2012 and licensed under Creative Commons rules.

The conversation progressed in the direction of the real-social-politik involved in sustaining Israel’s Jewish-majority state in atmosphere and character. Although not all Jews are perfect (or pure) anywhere — all humanity is imperfect) all in Israel understand the mission of the state as the proverbial “light unto nations”, which it has been, and as THE Jewish Homeland. Herewith a little more comment on the Western Wall; ancient tribal, medieval, and modern cultures; and the latest brought up by the impertinent behavior of the Women of the Wall movement.

Social influence and pressure move in both directions, but each place has its near starting points — the day we’re born (and surrounded in the cradle of family and community) and they day we become aware (psychologically autonomous and decision making).

Is tendency Reactionary –> Baseline Tradition?

Or Revolutionary –> Corrosive Reformation –> supersessionary liberating / tepid Secular Humanism?

I’ve give higher value to political equilibrium x place then to absolute (black-or-white) thinking and zealotry that becomes labeled “extreme” even though the “extreme” might be a right extreme. The reason is that the strong humanist umbrella would defend the faith of the faithful in place. Israel’s existence as ancient, medieval, and modern — and “hypermodern” as a progressive democratic open society — creates what is essentially a modern challenge

?
|Men Only —————————– | Women’s section |
–>
|Men Only —- | All Allowed ——————————– |
?

I am going to demur, I hope wisely, from launching arrows for either the sustained ancient world brought forward through identity, belief, and tradition or this new modern portal to a next civilization — that’s what the future leads toward always — that finds its common base as one against harm and threat in the defense of greater equality, inclusion, and respect across a broad cloud of humanity.

The Western Wall is public and the woman want to do as men do as equals with respect, but the same may indeed degrade and diminish the ancient systems that have both informed and sustained Hebrew existence.

Do the women (of the Wall) in their zeal think about that endowment?

–33–

FTAC: Turn Around – Globally ReStanced Time

25 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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Inspiration for this little bit of wisdom: another set-to about the God of Judaism and the God of Islam — or depictions, expressions, instructions, etc. seemingly attached to the construction or perception (in mind, of course) of each.

Basically: “Your God is not my God — and my rightness must be therefore more right than your rightness.”

And God must have put us here to prove how right we are about God.

Something like all of that plus the bloody historical baggage that has been dragged through time with that kind of thinking.

https://www.jcf.org/about-joseph-campbell/

http://thomasberry.org/

Ethnolinguistic cultures on earth: about 7,000 (fewer, actually).
There are many ways of looking up at the stars and experiencing or interpreting the divine.

In the Torah, God hears Ishmael’s cries too.

The more true challenge of the present lies in handling the habits attending medieval politics and worldviews that better account for turning something we cannot know — God, as we think of God, is greater than our observational capabilities — into something we think we know.
Judaism represents the Tribal Way of the Hebrews, an old People with a calendar to prove it and a distinct trail through time planted on or in the earth in built space or artifacts. Rather than mosey on to other civilizational uptake, adaptation, and competition, it might prove healthier to visit the present, take a deep breath, and have both a broad and long view backward, the better perhaps for considering and taking the next step forward.

Having given up the burning of witches and largely ejected “contra-lateral amputation” as inhumane (although there are some barbaric, malignant, primitive, and sadistic holdouts), we might do better than eternally trying to erase one another.

Call it a plea for peacefulness momentarily enshrined in a blog post . . . also a plea to perhaps stand together for a broad and great gaze backward from this extraordinary plateau in human communicating and social interaction — and then: think fresh; think forward; think next.

Commence.

The “New Nationalists” — there’s a term that’s getting around — are old feudal reactionaries. Each — start with Erdogan in his White Palace — means to live as if in a castle socially surrounded by nobility and attended by peons and slaves.

BackChannels hopes they will one day find themselves left floating in their own blood-dimmed and greed-soaked clouds and the better world, broadly inclusive, culturally self-sustaining (we should be concerned with keeping and growing our 7,000 or so living language cultures), earth conscious, still in awe of the universe, and beautifully interwoven will look back on them with a shudder.

–33-

The Kind of Woman the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Imprisons and Possibly Abuses and Tortures for Her Activism On Behalf of Other Muslim Women

14 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Political Psychology, Religion, Saudi Arabia

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Blogger; mother of four; B.A., English, University of Birmingham; M.A., English as a Second Language; post-graduate Ph.D. field: linguistics; religion: Wahabbi Muslim.

Present Location: Dhaban Central Prison, Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

Disclosure: BackChannel’s editor’s Facebook friendship and correspondence with Eman Fahad Al Nafjan dates back to May 12, 2011.

The editor’s last note to Eman — it was a long time ago given the richness of the Internet experience: August 16, 2016 — contained reference to a Muslim Matters piece, “World’s Largest Women’s University Opens in Saudi Arabia” (May 31, 2011), and had to do with Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman Women’s University, Riyadh. The find had to do with work on a BackChannels’ piece: “Sixteen Women — The Kingdom’s Most Powerful.” November 2, 2016.

The Kingdom had to have seen this greater day coming, “greater” for connecting the privileged of Saudi Arabia with the full breadth of the world’s English-speaking and other intelligentsia, i.e., the broad if thin international band of cosmopolitan, engaged, informed, and rapidly “chatyping” personalities. Nafjan has not only fit right in with the world’s intellectual class, she appears to be in trouble with the medieval kingdom for having been raised for the modernizing path and role taken.

What is it about feudal / medieval / tribal peacocks that so sustains contempt and fear in relation to women that the royal response to mild challenge, criticism, and practical reasoning comes to a still barbarous demand: “Lock her up!”

Addendum – March 14, 2019 (added to post July 27, 2019)

NEW YORK—PEN America announced today that it will award the 2019 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award to journalist, blogger, and activist Nouf Abdulaziz, activist and social media commentator Loujain Al-Hathloul, and blogger, columnist, and activist Eman Al-Nafjan—three Saudi women imprisoned for challenging, through their writing and their activism, therestrictive guardianship system that governs Saudi women and limits theirability to travel, marry, work, or receive education and healthcare without approval from a male guardian. Abdulaziz, Al-Hathloul, and Al-Nafjan each used their digital and news-reporting platforms to speak out on women’s rights and other forms of human rights repression in Saudi Arabia, including the long-standing ban on women driving. The ban was lifted in June 2018, yet immediately thereafter, many of those who had advocated for this change were arrested. Today these three writer-activists are among those still incarcerated for their dissent, reportedly facing torture, isolation, and threats of rape. In early March, Saudi authorities announced that they are planning to indict a number of those detained on national security-related charges; initial hearings in the trials of Loujain Al-Hathloul and Eman Al-Nafjan began March 13.

Pen America. “Pen America to Honor Imprisoned Saudi Writer-Activist and Woman’s Rights Champions Nouf Abdulaziz, Loujain al-Hathloul, and Eman al-Nafjan with the Pen/Barbey Freedom to Write Award at 2019 Literary Gala”. Press Release, March 14, 2019.

Related Online

Al Jazeera. “The Saudi women detained for demanding basic human rights.” Reposted on News24, November 30, 2018. –>

Those under arrest have been branded threats to national security and have been accused of being foreign agents. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the reason for the arrest is to silence the women and prevent others from participating in activism.

Rights organisations and governments around the world have called on the Saudi authorities to release all political prisoners, but to no avail.

Al-Nafjan, Eman. “Saudi Arabia, My Changing Home.” The New York Times, June 8, 2012. –>

Most people in the West, naturally enough, get their ideas about Saudi life from the media. They learn that women here are forbidden to drive, that they must be almost completely covered up when they appear in public, that unmarried women and girls can’t appear in public unaccompanied by family members.

All of this is more or less true, but it omits the reality that, for the average middle class Saudi woman who comes from a healthy family background, life is pretty good.

When everything is in place, a Saudi woman can live a comfortable life. A respectable husband is arranged for her to marry; she typically has a driver, servants and an extended family ready to give her financial and emotional support. All that’s expected of her is to have babies and fulfill social obligations.

Amnesty. “Saudi Arabia: Release Women’s Human Rights Defenders Immediately!” June 21, 2018. –>

Official statements in state media accused Loujain al-Hathloul, Iman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Youssef of forming a “cell,” posing a threat to state security for their “contact with foreign entities with the aim of undermining the country’s stability and social fabric.” A related hashtag describing them as “Agents of Embassies”, along with a graphic showing the six activists’ faces, have also been circulating on social media and Saudi Arabian print and broadcast media. Amnesty International is concerned that if charged, the activists could face up to 20 years in prison. Now is the time to take action and defend these brave activists, who are some of the most prominent heroines of the human rights movement in Saudi Arabia.

As the world praises Saudi Arabia for recent “reforms” – including allowing women to drive – we must raise the alarm for these imprisoned defenders who have fought tirelessly for years for women’s rights in the Kingdom.

Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia: Release women human rights defenders now!” Update on detainees and FAQs. n.d.

Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia: Reports of Torture and sexual harassment of detained activists.” November 20, 2018. –>

According to three separate testimonies obtained by the organization, the activists were repeatedly tortured by electrocution and flogging, leaving some unable to walk or stand properly. In one reported instance, one of the activists was made to hang from the ceiling, and according to another testimony, one of the detained women was reportedly subjected to sexual harassment, by interrogators wearing face masks.

Associated Press. “Saudi Arabia tortured female right-to-drive activists, says Amnesty.” The Guardian, November 20, 2018.

Committee to Protect Journalists. “Saudi blogger Eman Al Nafjan detained.” May 22, 2018.

Facebook. “Emad Al Nafjan”.

Fahim, Kareem. “Jailed Saudi women’s rights activists said to face electric shocks, beatings and other abuse.” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018.

Human Rights Watch. “Saudis Arrest 7 Women’s Rights Activists who had Upstaged Crown Prince on Driving.” Reposted by Juan Cole in Informed Comment, May 19, 2018. HRW Location.

Wikipedia. “Eman al-Nafjan”.

Saudiwoman’s Weblog. “About”.

The Guardian. “Eman Al Nafjan”. Profile and authored stories.

The Kingdom’s brand for the Kingdom’s best: “Traitor”.

Author of the tweet: Jamal Khashoggi.

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