Sharia Market

As the Sukuk trade becomes more and more widespread in the Islamic countries, (thes contries has no stock markets, since the concept of 'interest' is against the traditional laws of Sharia, the religious Islamic Code of Law.
Read this short Bloomberg article to find out how does the non-secular, relgious organizations try to deal with this issue. Read more!

"Devoted to Judeo-Christian Body Art"

Striking collection of images form all around the word.
http://www.religioustattoos.net/Other_Tattoos/Jesus/index.php
I only wonder if the different traditions of tattooing how could evolve like this. I mean Eastern Orthodox tattoos are quite similar to the middle-American one, yet, the ancient traditions are quite different in these regions, I assume. Read more!

Religion, faith and ethics - Marx's Capital rewritten by a Archbishop

Another fie blog on secular issues, including materials on a controversial exhibition by Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka and the rewritten Kapital, not by Karl Marx but a Reinhard Marx, the present Archbishop of Munich. Check it out! Read more!

A nice collection of Da Vinci's Last Suppers

A 20th century art historian, Erwin Panofsky once stated: "For an Australian Bushman, the Last Supper would seem to be no more then a excited group of people around the table." - without the knowledge of the story, or its iconic situations, items, the image loses its meaning and becomes something different.
Check out this outstanding collection of excited groups of people around the table: http://culturepopped.blogspot.com/2007/04/suddenly-last-supper.html
With this collection, of modifications of Da Vinci's masterpiece the same might be true. We know the "popular references", icons behind the figures, so we can understand them, even sometimes by sacral means. Read more!

Vaticano.org: The First Internet Coup

The hacker/artist group 0100101110101101.org hacked the Vatican main website back in 1998. An interesting example of how new media is used and misused in this context. Especially the reaction time from the religious organization, which had even a hard time figuring out the hacking attempt.

The website: http://0100101110101101.org/home/vaticano.org/spoof/index.html
More info at: http://0100101110101101.org/home/vaticano.org/story.html




The night of the 10th December 1998 begins the action that will go down in history as The First Internet Coup. Over 24 hours, a commando takes posses of the official online organ of information of the Vatican State, or the Holy See. The commando buys the domain name vaticano.org pointing it to a Canadian server, where has already been created a huge website esthetically identical to the official one (www.vatican.va).
An editorial network works 24-7 with precise instructions: copy as many texts as possible from the official website, modify them slightly and publish them in the fake one.
Like the Pope, 0100101110101101.ORG has decided to open the Holy Doors of the Net to pilgrims from the whole world: from the moment in which Vaticano.org is opened, a huge stream of visitors pours into the fake website. Over one year the spoof website reaches more than 4 million hits: a one-year radical performance and the Net will never be the same.
Read more!