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The High Holy Days are upon us. No, not that one. The high holy days of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

And with that, come the culture wars again. Some pundits Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. issue annual statements about the pagan origins of Halloween, and why their community should not participate in it. Certain Christian preachers like Pat Robertson opine:

The whole idea of trick-or-treating is the Druids would go to somebodys house and ask for money and if they didnt get money theyd kill one of their sheep, that was the sheep and it was serious stuff. All this business about goblins and jack-o-lanterns all comes out of demonic rituals of the Druids and the people who lived in England at that particular time.

In my own community, many Muslim leaders are politically quite progressive (against racism, against empire, against wealth disparity) but somewhat culturally conservative. In a widely circulated blog post by Imam Zaid Shakir, the charismatic American Muslim leader who is often favorably compared to Malcolm X, he offered a dismissal of Halloween:

One the tragedies of our times is found in the easy willingness some Muslims accept practices, rituals or cultural symbols that have their roots in demonic or occult practices.

This is not going to be one of those columns.

I find myself in a different space. I have zero interest in endorsing or rejecting Halloween on the basis of fitting in, assimilating to, or rejecting mainstream culture. I couldnt tell you anything about the Druids without going on Wikipedia. My concern has nothing to do with the historic origin of Halloween because, lets be honest, many of our religious traditions (and even buildings) have pagan roots. It has to do with what Halloween does for our community, or at least for my neighborhood.

A teenage girl tries on a Halloween costume in Miami, Florida. Halloween is now the second-largest commercial holiday in the United States according to National Retail Federation. Americans spent approximately billion on Halloween in 2013.

Yes, I struggle with certain parts of Halloween. I struggle to see 10-year-old girls dressed up in ways that project a type of precious sexuality. It breaks my heart to see the girls' costume aisle look like something out of a sick, perverted male fantasy. Rape culture, indeed.

Yes, lets just stop with the sexy Ebola nurse outfits, please. Or the female ISIS-fighter costumes.

Excerpt from:
Omid Safi: In praise of Halloween's ability to connect neighbors

October 27, 2014

by Thomas Fuller@www.nytimes.com

When he organized a get-together for dog lovers and their canine-averse neighbors, Syed Azmi Alhabshi thought he was doing a public service.

But after hundreds of people showed up to the event, billed as I Want to Touch a Dog on Facebook, and when pictures started circulating on the Internet of Muslim women in head scarves happily hugging dogs, Mr. Syed Azmi became an unwitting protagonist in the latest chapter of Malaysias culture wars.

In the week since the event, Mr. Syed Azmi, a pharmacist, has received more than 3,000 messages on his phone, many of them hateful and a dozen of them threatening physical harm. The police advised him to stay at home.

Malaysias Muslim leaders, who cite Islamic scriptures stating that dogs are unclean, lashed out at him in the news media. I feel the anger, and it is real, he said in an interview.

Over the past two weeks, Muslim leaders in Malaysia have denounced Halloween as a planned attack on Islam and Oktoberfest parties as a public vice the same as mass-promoted adultery.

The culture wars have waxed and waned in multicultural Malaysia in recent years as conservative Muslim groups have pushed back against what they describe as libidinous and ungodly Western influences in a country that has rapidly modernized and become more cosmopolitan.

Continued here:
Comment on Want to Touch a Dog? In Malaysia, Its a Delicate Subject by Terry

October 27, 2014

by Thomas Fuller@www.nytimes.com

When he organized a get-together for dog lovers and their canine-averse neighbors, Syed Azmi Alhabshi thought he was doing a public service.

But after hundreds of people showed up to the event, billed as I Want to Touch a Dog on Facebook, and when pictures started circulating on the Internet of Muslim women in head scarves happily hugging dogs, Mr. Syed Azmi became an unwitting protagonist in the latest chapter of Malaysias culture wars.

In the week since the event, Mr. Syed Azmi, a pharmacist, has received more than 3,000 messages on his phone, many of them hateful and a dozen of them threatening physical harm. The police advised him to stay at home.

Malaysias Muslim leaders, who cite Islamic scriptures stating that dogs are unclean, lashed out at him in the news media. I feel the anger, and it is real, he said in an interview.

Over the past two weeks, Muslim leaders in Malaysia have denounced Halloween as a planned attack on Islam and Oktoberfest parties as a public vice the same as mass-promoted adultery.

The culture wars have waxed and waned in multicultural Malaysia in recent years as conservative Muslim groups have pushed back against what they describe as libidinous and ungodly Western influences in a country that has rapidly modernized and become more cosmopolitan.

See the original post:
Comment on Want to Touch a Dog? In Malaysia, Its a Delicate Subject by aliefalfa

Gender, Identity Building, and Culture Wars: Jewish History and Yiddish Studies in Poland
Marcin Wodzinski, Director of the Centre for the Culture and Languages of the Jews at University of Wrocaw, on the differences he sees between the study of ...

By: Yiddish Book Center

See the original post:
Gender, Identity Building, and Culture Wars: Jewish History and Yiddish Studies in Poland - Video

Students at Stephen Protheros Assembly Series lecture on Thursday dove into the chasm of culture wars and partisan divisions in American politics.

The event, which was sponsored by the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics (DCRP), drew many members of the St. Louis community as well as students. Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University who has previously appeared on The Colbert Report, discussed his research into culture wars, or the conflict between cultural values that are growing more or less prominent in society.

Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, speaks about his book on Americas culture wars. The talk was sponsored by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics.

Rachel Lindsey, associate director of the DCRP, hoped that the lecture would help members of the University community look beyond the terms conservative and liberal and their usage in society.

I hope that this discussion helps [students] to think outside of the standard categories that are bandied around in media and public discourse, generally without a whole lot of thought behind them, Lindsey said.

Prothero began to study culture wars after the Ground Zero Mosque controversy in 2009-10, in which many people were angered by the potential construction of a mosque at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center buildings. A book by Prothero on the subject is tentatively scheduled to be published in April 2015.

In his speech, Prothero discussed the five main culture wars in U.S. history: the election of 1800in which newly formed political parties clashed over whether to increase or reduce the federal governments powerProtestant opposition to Catholics during the 1830s, Protestant attacks on Mormons during the mid 1800s, the Prohibition era and todays withering of the traditional definition of family values. He provided the context and results for each of these battles and explained why conservatives have always lost the culture wars they have launched.

He noted that todays culture war began with the IRSs attempts to tax segregation academies, or white-only private schools, to combat the Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision. He also claimed that conservatives have taken issues of race and converted them to arguments about family values and religions.

Prothero touched on other aspects of the modern culture war as well, including the controversial Roe v. Wade court case that allowed women to get abortions, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and Islam. He foresees the family values aspect of todays war coming to an end in around five to 10 years, but he added that the issues of race and religion will continue for years to come.

Lindsey planned the lecture and said the DCRP had brought Prothero to campus because of his extensive experience with religion and politics.

Read more:
Assembly Series speaker discusses culture wars, modern partisan politics