The most complete lunar eclipse for centuries was this this morning.
I didn’t wake up at the height of the eclipse, but here are pictures of the Moon as it passes out of the Earth’s shadow.
This was also a full moon, which is the only time a lunar eclipse can occur.
The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan have introduced regulations that conform to Afghan custom of hundreds of years. Little is new in their rules.
Anthropologist Thomas Barfield describes the circular reasoning about Islam in the Afghan mind:
“[S]ince all true Afghans were devout Muslims then all their customs must be Islamic as well, otherwise they could not be good Muslims (which they were by definition). Anyone proposing to change tradition could therefore be accused of attacking Islam itself.”
He continues:
“In other Muslim countries there was debate over responding to the Western colonial challenge by changing old traditions and reforming Islam, but not in Afghanistan.”
Barfield was referring to Afghanistan in the late 1800s, but little has changed in the era of the Taliban.
Source: Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)
Hot Tea with Sugar 