Atheist Stickers

Yesterday I was at a punk show in Belgium. Good stuff. Mohawks, loud music, a lot of shouting, singing and dancing, the works. One other thing that was also there was an anarcho punk merch table. They were selling a lot of stuff, promoting vegetarianism and saying that the state should be abolished, but what caught my eye were some anti-religion stickers.

It did make me think about the phenomenon of merchandise. This is somewhat my specialty. I always wonder why people buy and use merchandise. A lot of times it seems to me that it has to do with identity. You wear shirts, put stickers on everything and get a whole bunch of fridge magnets to let other people know who you (think you) are. Ironically, most of the time it doesn't matter what it says, as long as it says something. In the case of atheism arguably things even get weirder, because the identity construction revolves not around what you are, but what you aren't.

 I love the primitiveness of this one.

Do The Burka!

So this post requires me to dive into the messy world of politics for a bit. As a tourist though, not as a resident, as I've made clear again and again that I don't like to get involved in it. But I can describe it. Or at least try to.

You see, in Europe the debate about Islam has been building up. There are those that feel that Islam doesn't belong in Western society. They feel that it is backward, that it oppresses women, that it is a cruel system that not only condones but even encourages violence. Our own by now famous and infamous politician Geert Wilders even went so far as to call it not a religion at all but nothing more than a political ideology.

On the other side of this discussion are those that say that Islam cannot be reduced to a fixed set of characteristics like that. They argue that a fringe group of radicals is being mistaken for the largest group of members. They even say that this "mistake" is intentional, so as to create an idea of an enemy that needs to be defeated. It is thought that this imagined enemy can then function as a way to bring together people to persecute members of this perceived threat as a scapegoat.

It can all get complicated, where sometimes the allegations of those who try to fight Islam are actually being reinforced by representatives of the religion itself. When its enemies claim that it is a violent ideology they might use video footage of Muslims that say themselves that it is the sacred duty of all Muslims is to fight the infidels. This makes it very easy of course to mistake the testament of a few for an absolute statement. This, in turn, gives the anti-islamists some empirical ammunition again.

Embedded in this discussion is also the question about what Islam really is. Is there truly an absolute Islamic tradition or are there only Islams existing side by side? In the case of the burka, a piece of cloth that is supposed to cover the entire face of a woman save most of her eyes, this is being highly debated. Is it part of Islamic tradition or is it just a cultural practice that got picked up somewhere along the way? Recently in the Netherlands the anti-islamists approved a law banning the burka from the public space. Officially the reason was mainly safety. But the message underneath might be that Islamic tradition must always be subject to state interests. This however assumes that the burka is indeed a part of Islamic tradition, even though it is deemed such by outsider political forces.

This is a very very long road to what I want this post to be about. It’s also a long way to justify it’s religious significance, since arguably this is about culture and not religion (from a secular point of view, I'm actually not sure if the difference between the two can accurately be upheld). Where there is political and religious controversy of course there is also mockery. And this mockery is also bad. Very. Very bad. Oh Lord how you spoil me with such sweet suffering! So delightfully unbearable! Ladies and gentlemen, with great pride do I give you this golden turd of a video from my very own country: Do the burka!

I must once again thank Roel for bringing this to my attention. May Allah bless you my friend! ;)

Mosque Alarm Clock

Somehow my sister obtained a mosque alarm clock somewhere. Set the alarm and you'll hear the call to prayer, the adhan, at the designated time. Come to think of it now, even though I assumed it was a gimmick, for all I know people actually use it for the purpose of not forgetting when it's time to pray. If the Arabic Christians chime church bells by playing a tape recording of it, then why not this? Whatever the purpose, it's great. And of course, in all my naivety, I thought there was only one type of these clocks. Of course not. There are a lot of them!

Isn't Islam just fááábulous?

I did see this website: http://www.mosqueclock.com. The fact that it exists alone makes me happy. By the way, they so should have called these Allahrm clocks.

Islamic Comics: Silver Scorpion

When you don't feel pressured to come up with a clever line to generate interest for a post because the description suffices, then you know you have a good subject. I give you Silver Scorpion, the disabled Muslim superhero!

This picture I got from an article about the comic book that is very good. I'd like to quote most of it just to provide some background of how this seemingly unlikely superhero came about: "An early sketch shows a boy who lost his legs in a landmine accident – he later becomes the Silver Scorpion after discovering he can control metal with his mind. The inspiration for an ‘inclusive’ superhero came from US president Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. With that in mind, US philanthropist Jay T Snyder last month flew 12 disabled Americans to meet a group of their Syrian counterparts for a brainstorming session over a comic book script. ‘They helped create something by their combined talents and that becomes a gift to the world,’ said Mr Snyder, founder of the Open Hands initiative. Hamza Jaka, 18, of Fontana, Wisconsin, who has cerebral palsy, said: ‘The trip was great. I am a disabled Muslim and I love comic books, so this is like the highlight of my life.’ Initially, 50,000 Arabic-language comics will be distributed throughout Syria in November and will also be available worldwide online. It will be the first in a series of publications with international superheroes ‘based on the seeds that were created by these kids’, said Liquid Comics boss Sharad Devarajan."

Islamic Comics: The 99

So I talked about Iznogoud, but that really was just a secular comic book series making use of Islamic symbols for its plot, and only slightly so. The 99 is a different story. It is explicitly Islamic and has Islamic superheroes. Yes that's right, Islamic superheroes! In an article of the New York Times, it is explained that the comic "features Islam-inspired characters, based on the 99 attributes of Allah, who discover magic stones that unleash powers like superhuman strength, ability to read minds, and to teleport. And, in true super-hero style, they use these powers to fight bad guys." (see article). Damn! That's a lot of attributes! A rich source of inspiration for the comic book series to use. The comic book looks very good and clearly a lot of effort has been put into getting it up to match the current comic book standards. It seems to have done so better than some of the Christian comic books too.

Here is the official website of the series: http://www.the99.org/

Islamic Comics: Iznogoud

Iznogoud (pronounced "eeznogoode." Get it?) is a French comic book series that saw the light of day in the 1960s, written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean Tabary. I remember liking the comic books very much as a kid. The series is about Iznogoud, the helper, or Grand Vizir, of the Caliph, who actually wants to be Caliph in his place, a desire immortalized in the French phrase "Je veux être calife à la place du calife." Iznogoud is a self-centered and ill tempered character with a lust for power. All his plans to kill the Caliphe so he can take his place always backfire though and he ends up falling into his own traps in the best of comic book / cartoon tradition. The Caliphe himself on the other hand is a very kind and calm almost Buddha like person. The morale here is obvious, but actually so obvious that the comic mocks it too a bit. You sort of build up a sympathy for Iznogoud because he always fails so miserably. He is indeed your classic anti-hero.
        Now the only thing that makes all of this Islamic or even religious at all is that it deals with the Caliphate. The creators of the series are, at least as far as I know, not Muslim at all, so it sort of takes on this theme from the outside. It really could have been about anyone anywhere. This comic book is clearly from before Islam became the new Communism, otherwise the creators might have picked a different theme (Soviet Union anyone?) The Caliphate is difficult though, because the Caliph is simultaneously the head of state and the religious leader, ruling in a theocracy, in accordance with Islamic religious law, the Sharia. So the Caliph is simultaneously the mundane and the religious ruler. He is both priest and president. There seems to have been some religious controversy over it, where "unlike the French version Haroun El-Plassid's title was changed from Sultan to Caliph avoid upsetting the British Muslim community." (wiki).

Druze Art

Druze religion is a marginal religion in the Middle-East with Islamic origins. A short excerpt from the wiki entry will tell you: "The Druze (Arabic: درزي, derzī or durzī‎, plural دروز, durūz, Hebrew: דרוזים‎ druzim) are an esoteric, monotheistic religious community, found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, which emerged during the 11th century from Ismailism [a branch of Shia Islam]. The Druze have an eclectic set of beliefs that incorporate several elements from Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and other philosophies. The Druze call themselves Ahl al-Tawhid (People of Unitarianism or Monotheism) or al-Muwaḥḥidūn (Unitarians, Monotheists) – the official name of the sect is al-Muwaḥḥidūn al Dururz (The Unitarian Druze)." In addition to this, they have some interesting ideas about reincarnation, where they claim that the soul is immediately reincarnated in another body upon the death of the old one. I always envision a Star Trek like replacement of the soul from one body to the next thinking about that. Anyway, not only are the Druze an interesting religious community, they make some good kitsch!

 Horsie!

 No religion where men have moustaches like that can be wrong!

 Ain't no player like a Druze player?

 

Another horsie! The lion and the horse though? Did the Druze substitute the lamb for a horse? Color preserved?

And yet more horsies!

I'm not sure what the horse is meant to represent actually. It appears enough times for me to suspect significance at least. In case you were wondering about the star though, wiki does say something about that: "Their symbol is an array of five colors: green, red, yellow, blue, and white. Each color pertains to a symbol defining its principles: green for Aql "the Universal Mind/Nous", red for Nafs "the Universal Soul/Anima mundi", yellow for Kalima "the Word/Logos", blue for Sabq "the Potentiality/Cause/Precedent", and white for Talī "the Actuality/Effect/Immanence".These principles are usually represented symbolically by a five-pointed star."

LEGO Holy Buildings

Whohoow! This is the 100th entry! A three digit number, a rite of passage. I like the way this blog is going, I feel like it's finally started, the stats seem to look kindly on it, whatever that really means anyway. Some prophets say that things start to get interesting only when you hit 150, but this 100 things, I kinda like it, arbitrary as it might be. More importantly, I like the way the content is developing. Also, keep writing! I can never hear enough from people visiting these pages, whether they praise or condemn.

So to celebrate this, I wanted to write about something awesome. Now, granted, I have already written about the topic of LEGO meets religion, talking about Amy Hughes' Abston Church of Chirst, but that only scratched the surface. So here is a lot more awesomeness!

There is a blog devoted to holy buildings made of LEGO in which presence I humbly stand. Please do take a minute to visit GodBricks!

Book: Religion and Popular Culture in America by Bruce David Forbes (Editor) and Jeffrey H. Mahan (Editor)

Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan. Relgion and Popular Culture in America. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005.

This book popped up in a course on popular culture and religion. I thought I’d read it again now, in its entirety, since for the course only a few chapters were treated if I remember correctly. I liked it back then and still do, be it not without the necessary criticism.

The book proved to me to be a very helpful tool in distinguishing between the different types of relationships between religion and popular culture. In the introductory chapter, Bruce David Forbes describe four such relationships and especially the second one, popular culture in religion, that Forbes describes as “the appropriation of aspects of popular culture by religious groups and institutions” I find interesting. The book in fact is divided into four parts, each part consisting of various essays by different writers dealing with subjects that fit into the respective categories. The essays that fall into this category indeed I did appreciate the most. William D. Romanowski in his essay Evangelicals and Popular Music: The Contemporary Christian Music Industry argues that “the Christian music industry promoted an evangelical popular culture based on the rules of commercialism and not those of churches, elevating consumer values and taste at the expense of doctrine and tradition.” (p. 107). His perspective on religion as being personalized and commodified under the influence of, in the first place, the baby-boom generation is sympathetic to the way Stewart M. Hoover describes the development of religion in the United States when he looks into the functioning of the megachurch at Willow Creek. Hoover in his article proposes that “it is at [the] very direct and concrete level of practice, of actually touching and feeling objects, that a kind of piety can increasingly be invoked by, and satisfied by, commodity culture.” (p. 145). Hoover’s also talks about the idea of “seekers”, those whose “religious practice [is] oriented toward the self and conceiving of religion as a conscious search for a variety of inputs, which can then be coalesced into an identity for which the individual considers him- or herself responsible” (p. 144). This is in turn very sympathetic to the idea of the “questing” that Greg Peterson presents in his article The Internet and Christian and Muslim Communities, that he describes as “religious seeking motivated by dissatisfaction with existing answers.” (p. 127). All of these ideas are potentially very useful and also are in keeping with ideas that Moore and McDannell developed, to which indeed the authors heavily refer.

So what about the other three relationships? The first relationship is described as religion in popular culture that deals with such things as Madonna Videos and The Da Vinci Code. Products that make use of religious imagery rather than being explicitly religious expressions. The third relationship, popular culture as religion, explores the idea of popular cultural products functioning as religion like Star Trek, sports or even Coca Cola. It’s also about the question what religion really is or can be. If a definition of religion is broad enough to include Star Trek, does that mean that the definition is too broad or does it mean that we should acknowledge it? The fourth relationship then finally, religion and popular culture in dialogue, sort of concerns itself with “interactions between religious and popular culture [that] do not fit well in the three categories considered thus far.” (p. 15).

The results are mixed I’d say. Some articles seem well researched and have a good point, like the one by Romanowski. Others just seem far-fetched and seem to lose themselves in method and theory rather than properly researching a popcultural phenomenon, almost seemingly abusing it just to get a point across, quite like Bado-Fralick & Norris sometimes seemed to do. Still, I like the broadness of the range of topics that are being treated and the various methods that respective authors care to select to treat these topics with. The results may be mixed, but this mix seems healthy. It seems to present the reader with a good overview of what is going on in the field and it is a good introduction to some of the key authors that operate in it. It seems that Forbes and Mahan themselves were careful to set up an honest balance of representative work even when they mightn’t agree with all of the ideas that those works present. This makes it a fair work and leaves it up to the reader to make up his mind about it all. The variety of approaches indeed makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

It is in the very last part of the book that something surprised me. In the conclusion, Jeffrey H. Mahan notes that the audience for the studies is varied. He describes four diverse audiences. Audience one seeks description and analysis, audience two seeks methodological reflection, audience three seeks to clarify the religious life, and audience four seeks social or cultural reform (p. 291-293). Of the third kind, he writes: “The implied audience for these essays are thinking practitioners of religion who desire to more clearly understand the interactions between faith and culture, in order to enable lives of religious integrity.” (p. 292). This is debatable, because works like these can also serve an anthropological function. They can take you by the hand when you’re trying to make sense of a system of values that is alien to you.

Fulla the Muslim Doll

Some or perhaps all of the Fulla dolls also recite the Islamic opening prayer when you push a button on the back.