{"id":559,"date":"2004-07-08T16:56:32","date_gmt":"2004-07-08T20:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=559"},"modified":"2004-07-08T16:56:32","modified_gmt":"2004-07-08T20:56:32","slug":"something-old-something-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=559","title":{"rendered":"Something Old, Something New"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CATO Institute offers Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda<\/b><\/i><\/a>. Temporarily out of stock. Their special task force\/foreign policy team calls for troop withdrawal by January 1, 2005. <\/p>\n

If war alone is their strategy for defeating al Qaeda the focus is too narrow.<\/p>\n

Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Desperation and Hope from the Holy Land<\/i><\/b><\/a> by Mitri Raheb is something I’ve only just begun reading. <\/p>\n

I’ve dismissed the mindset of organised religion for years but have always been able to appreciate someone like Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian and pastor in Bethlehem who adheres to the principles of his faith with courage and conviction as he did during Israel’s siege on Bethlehem in 2002, as opposed to co-opting the power of it in order to gin up support for self-serving causes.<\/p>\n

It’s a fine line between someone who serves God and one who pushes their particular brand of worship as the absolute. I still believe that once you tag faith with a man-made byline such as Christian, or Jew, or Muslim, et. al., you’ve scrubbed out the higher power and applied your personal biases to the spiritual communion, building fences where there should be light.<\/p>\n

And due to my<\/i> prejudices and scepticism of all that organised religion implies I have a stubborn tendency to dismiss its potential as a catalyst for change; yet, how else to remedy a religious dilemma? In the 50 or so pages I’ve read so far, Mitri has reopened my eyes, reawakened me to the depth of faithfullness that is his and others’ lifeline, and reminded me that religion will never be removed from this equation.<\/p>\n

Thankfully there are people like Mitri working on a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CATO Institute offers Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda. Temporarily out of stock. Their special task force\/foreign policy team calls for troop withdrawal by January 1, 2005. If … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-91","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}