Wednesday 16:00-16:30 Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
23 January 2008 repeat 27 January
CULTURES OF APOCALYPSE A CNN Poll found that 20% of Americans – nearly 60 million people - believe the Apocalypse will take place in their lifetime. In his new book Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World, Nicholas Guyatt claims that the growing constituency of Apocalyptic Christians have influenced American Foreign Policy, particularly in the Middle East; and also suggests that we should worry because the ‘end of days’ is not something they wish to avoid, but something they positively welcome.
Laurie Taylor is joined by Nicholas Guyatt and religious commentator Martin Palmer to debate the issue.
POLITICS OF THE VEIL In March 2004, after fifteen years of debate over the wearing of the hijab, all ‘conspicuous’ signs of religious affiliation were outlawed in French public schools. The Government claimed that it had done so in order to protect the secularism upon which the French Republic was based and to integrate Muslims into French society. A number of the law’s supporters saw the headscarf, or the “veil” as it came to be called, as a means of oppression and believed the legislation would emancipate the girls from an Islamic patriarchal imposition. But Joan Wallach Scott in her book Politics of the Veil claims that the controversy over the wearing of the veil in France is due to the country’s failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens.
Professor Wallach Scott argues that the outlawing of the veil in public schools in France was a racist act and merely a means of avoiding the real issues facing modern France’s multicultural society.
Additional information:
Nicholas Guyatt Lecturer in American history at University of York. Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World Publisher: Harper Perennial ISBN 10: 0061152242 ISBN 13: 978-0061152245
Martin Palmer Theologian and historian of religion. Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture (ICOREC); Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and an author of many books on world religions. Martin is also co-chair of the UN programme “Climate Change, The Natural Environment and the Faiths - the UN and the religions working together” launched on Dec 1st 2007 and which will run for three and a half years.
Dancing to Armageddon Publisher: Aquarian Press ISBN-10: 1855381850 ISBN-13: 978-1855381858
Professor Joan Wallach Scott Harold F. Linder Professor in the Schools of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Politics of the Veil Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN - 10: 0691125430 ISBN – 13: 978-0691125435
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