SPECIALS
Supernatural
Wealth Transfer
Ryann
Sierra Leone is a very religious place. Some 99% of the population
identifies as either Christian (24%) or Muslim (76%), though the majority
combines these beliefs with various traditional beliefs.
It's also an amazing model of religious plurality. There is good-natured
teasing but absolutely no tension between Christians and Muslims.
Intermarriage is so common as to barely merit a mention. If a Christian
lives in a village without a church, he or she will often turn to the Imam
for guidance, and vice versa. Muslims all go to church on New Year's (because
that's what you do).
This religious tolerance is worthy of a much longer and more serious post (one
I've been meaning to write for some time). For now, however, I want to be a
bit lighter.
One of the most visible trends of Christianity in Sierra Leone is big, bold,
unapologetic, fire-and-brimstone evangelism. Posters and banners adorn walls
through the city, announcing visiting preachers -- many from Nigeria --
special redemption campaigns, and revivals in the national stadium. I used
to live down the street from one of many branches of the Flaming Bible
Church, with its logo of a burning cross, and I now spend every Sunday
morning lying in bed and listening to a hundred exalted voices calling "hallelujah".
I'm certainly happy to live-and-let-live (as the Sierra Leoneans do) when it
comes to religion. People find faith and guidance in many different forms.
But sometimes I can't help but giggle a bit at the more notable campaigns.
One of my favorites was from a year or more ago. Operation P.U.S.H. -- Pray
Until Something Happens. I wonder if anything did.
Then today I saw an enormous poster (taller than me) for a month-long
crusade. Among the many miracles on offer was a declaration that 2008 was
the year of Supernatural Wealth Transfer.
I imagined money falling from the sky, or a mysterious transfer into all
believers' bank accounts from the Bank of God.
Hmm, maybe I should give this church business a try... a Supernatural Wealth
Transfer doesn't sound too bad. Monday, April
21, 2008 Ryann from Salone, Sierra Leone
"Sharia
by proxy" in Lagos State
Monday, August 06, 2007
We don crase patapata
funmi
Sharia by proxy" in Lagos State
Policeman: where are
you coming from?
FunmI: work, we just dropped off a friend and are going home.
Policeman: So why you dress like this?
Bose and FunmI: like how?
Policeman: (shouting and waving a copy of PM News) una no
hear wetin Fashola (gov of Lagos) talk abi? Una no hear?
FunmI: (keeping tight rein of rising bile and anger) hear
wetin?
Policeman: (jabbing his finger at us and spitting the words
out with disgust) na so una suppose dress, why you dress like this?
FunmI: what do you mean? This woman here is a doctor, a
mother and wife, this is her husband.
Policeman: If na married woman why she no dey her house, all
these useless women!
By now Jide is asking what is going on and the others are coming around.
Suddenly one with a guttural Warri accent scream that he will deal with us and
that in fact they should take us all to the station. Jide is annoyed and
shouting, Bose and l are shaking in anger whilst l think of whom to call to
stop the madness.
Suddenly one of the plain clothed one recognised me and says ha this is aunty
Funmi ke! Aunty Funmi New Dawn isn't it? Yes l said. Don't be annoyed he said
in rapid Yoruba, please you can go. Jide and Bose are still arguing with the
other two as we get back into the car.
As we drove off we hear him shouting defiantly, What if you be barrister and
she be doctor, na only una read book? Warn your wife and all these asewo
women, we go deal with them for Lagos.
Funmi Iyanda
August 11, 2007
Christian and Secular Talibans
From the banning of
trousers to the arrest of skimpy dressers, chauvinistic conservatism tries to
take root in Christian and secular Nigeria.
The General Overseer
One of the largest
Pentecostal churches in Nigeria—the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)—recently
decided to ban ladies from wearing trousers (better known as pants to
Americans) to church, according to The News. The report states that the head
of the church, known as 'The General Overseer', decided to ban females from
wearing trousers as a result of the fact that it was "offensive" to some
"worshippers."
RCCG, like any other
religious, social or corporate organization in Nigeria, certainly has a right
to impose a dress code on its members. However, a worrying trend can
undoubtedly be discerned here, i.e., a growing chauvinistic conservatism that
appears to pervade not just religious organizations but also 'secular
organizations' like the Nigerian Police Force. These conservative ideologies
are mainly targeted at ladies, who, it appears, need to be forcefully educated
on the morals of appropriate dressing.
A couple of weeks back, the Nigerian
Police began harassing, and in some cases arresting, residents in the
commercial city of Lagos over skimpy dresses. Now, one could be forgiven for
thinking that such arrests could and do take place in the Islamic north of the
country, where Sharia law happens to be in place. But these arrests occurred
in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial and cosmopolitan center.
From all indications, the new Lagos
Police Chief, Mr. Muhammed Abubakar, is behind the latest craze of harassments
being experienced.
Monday, 13 August 2007
what's your hobby?
Crooked
Corner Justyna
It is a fact. Poland is full of freaky Christians. And I am not talking about
the evangelical types inhabiting the bible belt of the US southern states who
like to clap and dance and on occasion join a cult or stick a ‘Jesus loves my
ma’ sticker on the boot of their car. I’m talking about the fundamentalist
freaks. The ones who fuck up the state by blindly voting for the party that
their local priest is sodomising. The ones who never actually question the
need for separating the church from the state (wake up Poland!!!). The ones
who spend their last pennies of their pension on petrol for the brand swanking
Merc their fat priest is driving. AND the ones who spend weeks on pilgrimages,
at the ripe age of 16, when they should be getting pissed and listening to
loud guitar with their friends. Ok, or some raw NWA or whatever the equivalent
is today.
Freaks
in action. Check out the portable speakers they carry. So god can hear them
Yes,
welcome to the annual Pilgrimage to the Shining Mountain!! August is the month
where presbyteries across Poland motivate their ‘flock’ and organise
‘excursions’ to the Hill in Czestochowa, where an old painting of the Madonna
is hung (Poland’s patron and some would say the Pope’s only mistress. Yeah
yeah, everyone knows John Paul II had a thing for Mary). Kids young and old,
don comfortable shoes, sing hymns, hold hands, communally pray and walk for
weeks across Poland to reach the Hill, AND PRAY SOME MORE. They cross
villages, forests and streams all for Jesus. Or Mary. And for a bit of
snogging action when the priests aren’t looking. The ‘faithful’ sleep in tents
or are put up at local houses in various villages, fed and are sent on their
way. People, usually equally freaky Christians who are too old to do the walk
themselves, open their homes and hearts and dress the streets in flowers for
the ‘youth who will save Poland’. From what? Progress!
heavy
freak action
We
were on our way to Warsaw when I saw this phenomenon in action. I wet my pants
with excitement and nearly fell out of the car when taking happy snaps. The
traffic would come to a halt, watch the freak show, read the banners (the
pilgrimage participants have their own banner representing the town that they
are from), toot in support, or gape at the fucked-upness of it all. I did.
Then I turned to Michal and said: “if our kid ever tells us he wants to go on
a pilgrimage, I will punch him”. Screw tolerance.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Idea of Mamoon
Kalpana Chawla rebirth
Times of Kashmir
Idea of Mamoon
KHURJA (Uttar Pradesh): A four-year-old girl who claims her name is Kalpana
Chawla and that she died up in the skies four years ago is drawing huge crowds
in a village here in Uttar Pradesh.
Residents of Nar Mohammadpur village, about 35 km from here, where little
Upasana is visiting her relatives, think she might be the reincarnation of the
India born astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who died when US space shuttle Columbia
crashed four years ago.
The news of the girl's claim spread quickly in the area after she spoke to
some villagers here.
"I am Kalpana Chawla," says Upasana, who reportedly fears the sight an
aircraft. She has been telling her illiterate parents that she died in a
"crash" up in the skies.
"Upasana has been telling us ever since she started speaking that her name was
Kalpana Chawla and that her father's name was Banarsi Das Chawla but we could
not figure out anything as we had never heard of Kalpana," Upasana's father
Raj Kumar told reporters on Friday.
Raj Kumar is a resident of Pata village of Etawah district where he works as a
labourer.
"Yet Upasana's proclamation led us all to believe that she was actually
talking about her previous birth," he said. "She claims that the spacecraft
was hit by a huge ball of ice that sent it crashing and ended her life."
Upasana was born barely two months after the astronaut's death in 2003.
Idea of Mamoon
Religion