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Rabbi, please continue to teach

Rachel does it again. I’ve been sitting on this post for too long. The Islamic tradition, according to Qur’anic injunction (17:78-79), is for three times prayer, dawn, just before sunset and just after sunset. And of course, many Muslims have seen the little prayer books for the pre-anything prayers, including going to the bathroom. Recently found one for a dua to say before having sex. Who says we’re a repressed people? Rachel’s post, and the obvious similarities to Muslim traditions, got me thinking about the meaning of ritual. The idea of using a symbolic language, in this instance ritual, is…

Hope in Mecca

This article in IHT provides some encouraging news about the open debates taking place in Mecca during Hajj: The two-hour presentation "Mecca: The Cultural Capital of Islam" was dry, but things got rolling in the question and answer session in a way quintessentially Meccan. One by one, audience members – a surprising number of them women – came to the microphone with questions that few others would dare ask publicly. .ism," asked one woman. . "Why do we look only into the past and not to the future," another woman demanded. . The session soon grew into a raucous series…

Of African Princes and Russian Poets – NYTimes.com

Of African Princes and Russian Poets – NYTimes.com. Alongside the luminaries of the town and province were high representatives of Russia and Estonia, as well as the ambassador of Cameroon and the sultan of Logone-Birni (now in Cameroon), resplendent in the colorful garments of their African homeland.  The requisite speeches were delivered, and all shivered at attention as the local marching band wrestled gamely with the European Anthem (more familiar as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”). Then the sultan, Mahamat Bahat Marouf, was ushered forward to pull the veil off a modest plaque affixed to the wall. The legend, in French…