religion Archives - Insideotherplaces

Posts tagged "religion"

All aboard the Varanasi time machine

Of all the current nations in existence, it is perhaps India that has the best claim to an uninterrupted link to its ancient past. Both Egypt and Iran lost something of their origins in their conversion to Islam, as did Greece and Rome with Christianity. China certainly retains real connections with two millennia ago, in its written language and philosophies such as Confucianism for example, although communism did reject and try to suppress some of what its leaders saw…

Hot Hindu Hardcore Temple Action

Taking a good, hard look at India’s erotic, temple carvings. Many would imagine that liberated sexual attitudes are much of a modern creation but Hindu history has a bit to say about that. While contemporary India is known for relatively conservative values, this is more a result of the preceding 500 or so years of Muslim and British colonial rule, that were much more squeamish about any public reference to the possibility of sex actually being something enjoyable. Muslim artistic…

Fasting for Ramadan in West Africa

Learning what its like fasting for Ramadan, living with a Muslim family in West Africa

Africa as a destination for history

Apart from North Africa the continent is rarely seen as a destination for lovers of history, that needs to change. Like me you’re probably enduring the interminable state of lockdown, wondering when it will ever end, perpetually scrolling through social media in search of more crumbs of distraction. Well, help is at hand travel fans. The BBC have kindly posted to YouTube a fifteen part documentary on the history of Africa that will comfortably use up over eleven hours of…

A traveler’s view on cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation – taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. Let me tell you a story… Sitting at a cafe in Medellin, Colombia, I was eating the classic Italian dish of Lasagna, accompanied by salad and a croissant, typically French but actually Austrian in origin, although in all likelihood copied from an Egyptian pastry dating back to ancient times. A French cultural organisation was promoting a day of free music so I…

Why travellers should give to beggars

The question of whether travellers should give to beggars often crops up on travel blogs but it often amounts to little more than a bunch of reasons why you shouldn’t give money, or anything even, to beggars. In fact, I’m surprised that some of them even manage to raise some basic notions of charity in their writing. What many of the discussions fail to do is take into account is an understanding of the specific contexts of different locations, implying…

Cholitas and Bolivia’s colonial hangover

Think of an image of Bolivia. Would it be those women with the bowler hats by any chance? How about its famous, sweater wearing president Evo Morales? The bowler hats make for an iconic image, because of course we recognise them as our own culture implanted into an alien environment. The president’s sweater, proudly worn as a testament to his indigenous heritage, is however, only marginally less of an import: it may be made from local alpaca wool but needles…

Biker babes of Burkina Faso

Motorbikes, Muslims, fashion and the modern woman in Burkina Faso. When your brain does a Google image search on the terms Muslim women, African women or African Muslim women, what comes to mind? I won’t be so presumptuous to think that my regular readers are the kind of people to jump immediately to the stereotypes of poverty and oppression, or at the very least to move on from them after a moment’s reflection – after all there are many…

Village of Witches

Traditional religion and accusations of witchcraft in West Africa. Centuries after the introduction of Islam and Christianity to Sub-Saharan Africa, traditional religions may have been relegated to the margins in much of the continent but they still have a powerful hold over the culture of many Africans. Traditional religions, or at least elements of them, are often practiced alongside peoples’ professed faith, despite the best efforts of Imams and priests to paint the acts as haram or heretical. However, the…

The dark side of Egyptian sex life online

It’s almost inevitable that the more you get to know a country, especially by making friends there, that you start to come across the darker sides to life, usually hidden from the passing tourist. Our own countries are no exception, as humanity’s baser urges hold little respect for wealth, culture or religion, these factors just influence the style in which these urges express themselves and how they are responded to by society. Almost universally it is women that are on…

Tag: religion

All aboard the Varanasi time machine

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Hot Hindu Hardcore Temple Action

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Fasting for Ramadan in West Africa

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Africa as a destination for history

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A traveler’s view on cultural appropriation

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Why travellers should give to beggars

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Cholitas and Bolivia’s colonial hangover

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Biker babes of Burkina Faso

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Village of Witches

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