the big difference between reform and orthodox isn’t belief, it’s practice. reform rejected the centrality of halakah, jewish law,  as the gold standard for judaism.  like christianity reform focused on a particular set of beliefs as well as a communal fellowship. it even mimicked christian practices such as the usage of organs.

reform addressed the fact that it is very difficult to be a jew who follows halakah and is integrated into gentile life. this was not a problem before 1800; jews were viewed as corporate entities, and rabbis ran their communities segregated from everyone else. the only way jews could leave was convert to christianity. after 1800 this changed, and so the orthodox monopoly which was enabled through christian collusion broke up. jewish individualism resulted in experimentation with various practices, beliefs and organizational styles.

orthodox do not consider non-orthodox jews religious jews. rather, they consider them ethnic jews who practice another religion. so when the orthodox say “he’s become religious” in regards to another jew, he means that they’ve become orthodox.

i think the position of islam as a minority religion in the west means that some of the same issues apply. the main difference is that jews were a small community who didn’t identify with a powerful and robust civilization.

Banning ‘religious symbols’ is, generally, a waste of time.

I was a little late and something struck me as I tried to find a table.

All the English (white) people were sitting on the same table together.

All the Filipino people were sitting on the same table together.

The rest of the tables were filled with Indians.

By chance (?) I only found a table with the half-dozen (British-based) Pakistanis who work in the office.

“Preservation” of Emirati culture and national identity is something that is routinely brought up in the media. While it is possible to sympathise with these complaints, one can easily argue the governments of the various Emirates and other Gulf states have made a rod for their own back (and things look set to continue this way).

I don’t think it will be easy to reverse the trend of young Emiratis becoming ‘westernised’ (visit the big malls even in a relatively conservative city like Abu Dhabi), if that is what motivates the complaints. It may not even be possible.

*Stop laughing at the back.

But, as noted earlier, Kemalism was not the sharp break with the ‘past’ it attempted to be or is thought to be:

Though it broke, sharply and abruptly, with Ottoman culture in one fundamental respect by abolishing its script and so at a stroke cutting off new generations from all written connection with the past, in its distance from the masses Kemalism not only inherited an Ottoman tradition, but accentuated it.

Plus, Anderson notes:

Kemalism did not so much separate religion from the state as subordinate it to the state, creating ‘directorates’ that took over the ownership of all mosques, appointment of imams, administration of pious foundations – in effect, turning the faith into a branch of the bureaucracy.

The article also touches on Kemal, the man:

Towards the end, photographs of Kemal have something of the glazed look of a worn roué: a general incongruously reduced to a ravaged lounge lizard, terminal blankness nearby. Stricken with cirrhosis, he died in late 1938, at the age of 57.

[T]he complete absence of a non-migrant (or distant migrant) African-American Muslim voice in [Melody] Moezzi’s book [War On Error: Real Stories of American Muslims] is troubling. There is much bitterness among African-American Muslims about what many see as the dominance of migrant Muslims from the Middle East and Asia in Muslim religious and community affairs. African-American Muslims – whether of the more heterodox “Nation of Islam” variety or from more mainstream denominations - are a growing force in American Islam. America’s first two Muslim Congressmen are both African-American. It seems curious that Moezzi could not find a single African-American Muslim prepared to talk about his or her faith on the record.