{"id":9575,"date":"2017-05-24T17:40:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=9575"},"modified":"2017-05-24T17:40:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:40:46","slug":"the-department-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/05\/24\/the-department-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Department Of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Egypt, Amira Sayed Ahmed reports <\/a>in AL Monitor <\/b><\/i>on the grounds a government with an explicit religious association must traverse, which makes our occasional tippy-toes through religious controversy looking quite easy:<\/p>\n

The bill would restrict the issuance of public edicts or fatwas to clerics and researchers affiliated with only four entities: Al-Azhar, the Ministry of Religious Endowments, Dar al-Ifta (official entity charged with issuing edicts) and Majma al-Buhuth al-Islamiya (Islamic Research Academy). Clerics should get permission\u00a0from one of these entities before issuing any public fatwa on\u00a0TV.<\/p>\n

According to the bill, preachers and professors of Al-Azhar University could perform their tasks of preaching to people without being obliged to get permission, since preaching is not considered a public fatwa. But if they wanted to issue a certain public fatwa, they should\u00a0first obtain a license from one of the\u00a0four entities.<\/p>\n

This step came as part of Al-Azhar’s efforts<\/a> to reform religious discourse and curb the torrent of the so-called fatwa chaos that flooded media outlets, inciting extremism<\/a> and fanatical thinking. The draft law was approved one day before Al-Azhar University President Ahmed Hosni labeled\u00a0Islamic researcher Islam al-Beheiry an apostate. Hosni\u00a0apologized and resigned May 5.<\/p>\n

“A fatwa is a huge responsibility and it has certain requirements, no question. The issuance of a fatwa should be exclusively limited to specialists since these edicts may lead to crucial consequences. I highly welcome this bill,” parliament member Amna Nosseir\u00a0told Al-Monitor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which leads to the question, does the government control the religion – or does the religion control the government? While the answer may appear to be the former, it could be the latter, as a single sect may be trying to restrict other sects from using fatwas <\/i>– legal opinions on issues pertaining to Islamic law – which can lead to unfortunate consequences. This is rooted in the believers’ certainty of the righteousness of their beliefs.<\/p>\n

Incorporating such strains into our own government would bode very poorly for a peaceful, prosperous future. Not every sect can be right – but none willing to assert the rightness of Dominionism will be willing to back down in the face of anything less than terminal violence.<\/p>\n

Which, as the Founders noted, is an excellent reason to keep the United States secular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Egypt, Amira Sayed Ahmed reports in AL Monitor on the grounds a government with an explicit religious association must traverse, which makes our occasional tippy-toes through religious controversy looking quite easy: The bill would restrict the issuance of public edicts or fatwas to clerics and researchers affiliated with only \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9576,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions\/9576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}