Muslim Lingerie A Hot Item in Syria

Talk about breaking stereotypes.

The BBC just ran an interesting article on the Syrian tradition of presenting a new bride with lingerie. Apparantly the female relatives all get together and buy frilly g-strings and bras for the lucky woman. It's gotten hi-tech now with heart-shaped underwear that sing songs, and sound-sensitive bras that fall off when you clap. Reminds me of that old American TV commerical for The Clapper ("Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!!!).

Since this all happens within the context of marriage, there's nothing unIslamic about it. In fact, the article states that in Islamic law, not getting satisfied is valid grounds for a woman to divorce a man. I didn't know that. I wonder how often that actually makes it though the courts? One of the producers of this stuff points out that it actually helps support religion, because if a couple is satisfied with each other they won't go looking elsewhere. A sizzling home life stops you from sinning.

There's an entire street dedicated to lingerie at the Damascus souk. I missed it somehow when I was there in 1994. Perhaps I saw women's clothing and ducked down another alley, assuming I wouldn't be welcome. Or perhaps I was too fascinated by that amazing bookshop behind the Blue Mosque. My loss!

African Religion Survived Among American Slaves

The Archaeology News feed, which you can see at the righthand column of this blog, had an interesting article recently about a 300 year-old African "spirit bundle" found in Maryland. The bundle of sand and clay contained bits of metal and a stone axe, and may be the earliest evidence of slaves preserving their West African religion after being brought to the New World. Bundles like it are still used in West Africa to ward off evil spirits.

The archaeology of slavery has only recently become an area of interest to American archaeologists (who are predominantly white) and hopefully this important find will lead to more digs. An excellent book on African survivals in African-American culture is Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson. It's well worth a read.

Atheist Ad Campaign

A group of atheists backed by famous atheist writer Richard Dawkins are trying to raise money to put ads on London buses, according to an article in the Guardian. The ads will use the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

I happen to agree with this statement, but there's a problem. They're saying there's probably no God, which means they admit the possibility, however slim, that there is a God. That makes them agnostics, not atheists. I've come across this confusion before among atheists, and I have to say it baffles me.

The campaign is in response to ads by a Christian group whose website says we're all going to burn in a lake of fire if we don't accept Jesus. In support of the atheist ads, Dawkins said, "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think--and thinking is anathema to religion."

Silly boy, thinking is anathema to fundamentalisms of all sorts, whether fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Communism, or fundamentalist atheism. Intelligent, thinking people come to all sorts of different answers to life's questions, and fighting intolerance with intolerance isn't going to get us anywhere.

How about this for a slogan: "Consider agnosticism, because it's OK to say 'I don't know.'"

The Muslim Community in Spain

Police in Barcelona arrested nine people this week in connection with the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid. I'm glad they're hunting down these guys, but knowing Spain's wimpy sentencing laws I'm sure they won't spend the rest of their lives in jail like they deserve.

It's sad these idiots have become the face of the Muslim community in Europe, because all of my interactions with European Muslims have been positive ones. Just this week in Julián's favorite park he got to play with a little Moroccan girl. She had a big purple plastic hammer he liked (he's big into tools) and so she filled up a bucket with sand while he pounded the sand flat so she could fit more in. Meanwhile I shared a bench with the kid's mother, who dressed traditionally but spoke excellent Spanish.

A lot of pundits whine about Muslim immigrants not "becoming European". Well, I'm not becoming European either, and I bet these same pundits have never shared a bench with a Muslim immigrant and watched their children play together. I bet they won't report on it either.

A Pagan Grove and Norman Church in Iffley

We have a new favorite walk from Oxford. Just a couple of miles up the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and past a nice riverside pub, is the little village of Iffley. Its main claim to fame is a fine Norman church built in the late 11th century that's is almost perfectly preserved. Early on, it changed hands from the local lord to an estate further away, and while the absentee owners paid for its upkeep, they didn't do much to change it, making it one of the most pristine Norman churches in the country.

The front is very Romanesque, and the door is decorated with an unusual partial zodiac, which I'll post on later with more pictures. There's also an atmospheric old cemetery and a 1,500 year-old yew tree. The local priest thinks it was part of a sacred pagan grove and that under the church there's probably an old Saxon church from the 5th or 6th century. Since early church builders liked to build in sacred groves, I'm thinking the Saxons cut down the center tree of the grove, which was probably as old then as this one is now, and built the church on top of it. You see this sort of behavior with mosques, churches, and synagogues in the Middle East depending on who won the latest war.

The surviving tree was probably little more than a sapling then, young when its religion was old, and escaped the notice of the Christians. Perhaps cutting down the central, most sacred tree in the grove was all that needed to be done to destroy it as a place of religious significance. I remember reading in some early Christian accounts where they destroyed sacred groves, and they usually only destroyed the main tree. The sole surviving sacred yew can be seen on the righthand side of both the photos of the church here.

Gay McPride

This weekend in Madrid we had the annual gay pride day, with thousands of people pouring into the city to pack the nightclubs and have loud parties. Being a married straight guy, I celebrated by going for a walk with the family and spending the evening with an action movie and a bottle of wine.

While we were out for a walk I saw some revelers carrying rainbow fans. Nothing unusual, of course, because people were decked out in rainbow capes, rainbow shirts, rainbow sunglasses, etc., etc., etc., but what caught my attention about the fans was that they had a big McDonalds logo.

When did Ronald McDonald come out of the closet? While it's nice that McDonalds is supporting tolerance, I have to wonder about their sincerity. I never saw McDonalds supporting Gay Pride back in the United States. They're probably afraid the Born-Again Christians would go get fat in Burger King instead.

Gay activists often say they want to be treated like everyone else. Careful what you wish for. Do you really want to be sponsored by McDonalds?

A Tour of Roman London

One of my favorite free online magazines, Timetravel-Britain, has just published an article I wrote that gives A Tour of Roman London. It was a fun article to write. The City, which is the heart of London's financial district, stands directly atop the old Roman city of Londinium. Sections of the old city wall and even the temple of Mithras can still be seen today. I've always been fascinated by bits of the past sticking out in the modern world.

Sadly, Madrid is a relatively new city. It didn't become capital until Philip II made it so in 1561. Before that it wasn't much of anything, but successive kings built palaces and churches and made it an important city. Later kings tried to imitate Paris, and tore down a lot of the older buildings to make way for wide avenues and parks, so there's not much left of those early centuries. Ah well, I can always go to London for Roman remains, or Segovia, which is much closer!

Book Review: A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome

For travelers who like art, there's a new series out from Roaring Forties Press called ArtPlace, which looks at popular destinations through the eyes of their greatest artists. A couple of days ago on my other blog, Midlist Writer, I interviewed Angela K. Nickerson about how she landed a job writing A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome. Today I'm reviewing the book itself.

First off, the book is beautiful. There are high-quality color photos on every page, many being the talented work of Nickerson herself, and the layout is clean, well-presented, and friendly to the eye. The whole project shows the typical love of the book you get from the small press. There are also readable maps showing all the major sites where you can see Michelangelo's art in Florence and Rome.

The text is well-written, lively without being pat, informative without being burdensome, and at 163 pages, it's easily readable on the plane as you head to Italy. It is not a comprehensive guide to Rome, but rather a supplementary book for a visitor who already has a guidebook but would like to know more.

There were a couple of rocky bits in the first chapter, where Nickerson is talking about the world into which Michelangelo was born. Christopher Columbus did not land on the coast of North America, but on various Caribbean islands and the coasts of South and Central America. The Portuguese, not Spain, conquered Brazil. But once she gets to her main topic Nickerson hits her stride. She leads us through the master's early work in Florence, to his first commissions in Rome. She's especially good at putting him in the political and religious context of the time, where popes and powerful merchants tried to prove their worth through patronizing art. Sidebars fill us in on such things as Renaissance manners, some of Michelangelo's sonnets, and the Bella Figura of the Italian woman.

Even avid history readers will discover something new here. I had no idea the ruinous cost of expanding St. Peters was a major cause in the selling of indulgences (forgiveness for sins), which in turn was an important impetus for the Reformation.

In all, A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome is a worthy addition to your luggage.

Cover shot courtesy of Roaring Forties Press. Other images courtesy Angela K. Nickerson.

Proposed Malaysian Law Would Limit Women's Travel

The BBC has reported that the Malaysian government is proposing to require women to get permission from their families or employers before they could travel abroad. Supposedly this is to keep them from falling into the hands of predatory gangs who will use them for drug trafficking or worse purposes, but it seems to me more to placate the rising Islamist movement in that country. If they're really worried about criminal gangs, how about launching a crackdown on criminals?

Many Muslims are objecting to what is obviously an unIslamic proposal. I've read the Qur'an (twice, in fact) and there is nothing in it about limiting a woman's human right to free movement. In fact, Muhammad's boss, first convert, and later wife was a woman named Khadijah who ran her own trading business. Muhammad was her caravan leader. As a rich businesswoman, Khadijah probably moved around a lot, although by the time Muhammad worked for her she was a middle-aged widow with several kids, an independent working mother in other words, so she probably didn't get around as much as she used to.

Hopefully the uproar will make the government back off. This law would hurt their country's economy because it will hamper the free movement of some of their best scientists and educators. It will also lead to far, far worse. If the government thinks that the Islamists will be satisfied with this little scrap, they'll soon find out otherwise.

Faking Divorce for the Sake of the Children

I mentioned my son's new school a couple of posts back ("The Religion Room") but didn't talk about how fierce the competition is for getting a place in public schools, which can vary widely in quality. Spaniards are are happy to falsify applications in order to get their kids in their chosen school: faking addresses, lowering incomes, creating illnesses, and now, apparently, they're faking divorces.

A kid from a single-parent home gets more points on their application, so according to a recent BBC article Spaniards are now pretending to get divorced, or sometimes really going through with it, to get their kid in the best school. The divorce rate goes up during application time, and many of these separations are miraculously patched up after the school year starts.

A long history of dictatorship followed by a succession of scandal-ridden governments has made Spaniards the most politically cynical people I've ever met in a democratic country. Many have no problems lying to a government that lies to them, and if it helps their child's education, why not? In a country where divorce wasn't even legal until 1981, the culture has now embraced separations of convenience.

Yet when the Pope died there were Catholic flags everywhere.

The Religion Room

Yesterday Almudena and I took Julián to see the school he'll be going to next year. I'd never gotten a good look at a Spanish public school before and I have to say I was impressed. The classrooms were well stocked, everything was clean, and they had some amazing computerized blackboards that immediately hypnotized all the toddlers on the tour.

One room they didn't show us was the classroom for religion. The topic is optional, although the conservative party wants to change that, and about half the parents opt for their child to have an hour of reading instead.

I'll be one of those parents. We passed by the religion class on the tour and I poked my head in. Virtually everything was Christian--posters on the life of Jesus, the Ten Commandments, a crucifix at the front of the class, etc. At the back of the class there was one poster on the "Religions of the World" that listed Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. There are a few more than that, folks!

I told this to Almudena and she just shrugged, saying "Religion class in Spain is Catholicism."

OK, fair enough. The vast majority of Spaniards are at least nominally Catholic, but I want my kid to have a well-rounded religious education. I'm an agnostic, but I think it's important.

It'll be easy enough. We know Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, Pagans, Bahai, and Zoroastrians. I even know one amusing little atheist who insists that his "knowing" there is no god is somehow less dogmatic than religious people "knowing" there is.

Between all these people and our well-stocked library I think we can educate him about all types of belief, not just the dominant one in his culture. Education isn't just about teaching kids the familiar, it's about exposing them to the different.