August 30, 2005--Keeping Up With the Ayatollah
My favorite section of the NY Times is the Sunday Week In Review. Not only does it include classified ads such as Jobs In Education (important to me since one never knows), but also an occasional interesting op ed piece or something rich in context. To cite just one example, did you see this Sunday's "Getting Personal: Advice From Ayatollah Sistani"?
It refers one to his website (www.sistani.org). There you will find answers to hundreds of questions you wanted to know about but were afraid to ask, including "Is it allowed to eat at McDonalds?" (Answer: "It is allowed to eat those meals which do not contain meat."
(Glad to know I can still get my Thick Shakes.)
The website is well organized into about a dozen general categories. My personal favorites include Eating & Drinking, Medical Issues, and of course Death Related Issues. You have had a taste of an Eating & Drinking Q&A. Here then is a brief sample of the others. (Note by the way the progression from Eating & Drinking to Medical Issues to Death Issues.)
Q: "The medical profession demands that the doctor check his female patients carefully undressed . . . Is it permissable to engage in such circumstances?"
A: "It is permissable, if one refrains from forbidden looking and touching."
(I'm glad I got to my dermatologist last week before reading this!)
Q: "In some non-Mulim countries, the corpse is placed in a coffin and then buried in the ground. What is one's duty in such a situation?"
A: "There is no problem in placing the corpse in a coffin when buying him in the ground. However the requirements of burial must be fulfilled; and one of those requirements is that the corpse is placed on its right side."
(I can live with that.)
It refers one to his website (www.sistani.org). There you will find answers to hundreds of questions you wanted to know about but were afraid to ask, including "Is it allowed to eat at McDonalds?" (Answer: "It is allowed to eat those meals which do not contain meat."
(Glad to know I can still get my Thick Shakes.)
The website is well organized into about a dozen general categories. My personal favorites include Eating & Drinking, Medical Issues, and of course Death Related Issues. You have had a taste of an Eating & Drinking Q&A. Here then is a brief sample of the others. (Note by the way the progression from Eating & Drinking to Medical Issues to Death Issues.)
Q: "The medical profession demands that the doctor check his female patients carefully undressed . . . Is it permissable to engage in such circumstances?"
A: "It is permissable, if one refrains from forbidden looking and touching."
(I'm glad I got to my dermatologist last week before reading this!)
Q: "In some non-Mulim countries, the corpse is placed in a coffin and then buried in the ground. What is one's duty in such a situation?"
A: "There is no problem in placing the corpse in a coffin when buying him in the ground. However the requirements of burial must be fulfilled; and one of those requirements is that the corpse is placed on its right side."
(I can live with that.)
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:46 AM
1 Comments:
One of our dearest friends, who I will not name for the moment, is, for lack of a better term, an... explorer. What he likes to explore are web sites that feature naked people doing various things. One morning, our un-named friend bemoaned the fact that his computer had caught some sort of virus, no doubt as a consequence of his sundry wanderings onto the aforementioned web sites. Noki quipped that our friend's computer had caught "cyber V.D." Alex, typically, harbored concerns relating to government watchdog agencies and the like, ever leary of prosecutions and investigations or behaviors that could lead to either.
What sort of cyber ailments might one's computer contract as a result of visiting Ayatollah Sistani's web page? Perhaps none, provided that there is no "forbidden looking."
But on a more serious note, one should be careful visiting web pages, because someone, somewhere, is watching. And when you log onto a site, your computer shares information with the server. In today's world, information is very much a two way street.
Does this change the roll of journalism? Should journalists warn readers of possible consequences of visiting particular web pages cited in their articles? Once upon a time, the roll of the journalist was simply to portray the truth and convey information. Now, merely looking at information entails costs and dangers (un-wanted membership on lists maintained by the FBI, perhaps, or state department or, worse, Iranian governmental agencies)? Does the journalist have any responsibility to protect readers, or at least apprise them of such costs? As an attorney, I wonder what would happen if a reader went to visit a web page cited in a Times article and, for example, had his computer hacked as a result. Could the Times be liable for the damage done to the computer? Information and security are at odds now like never before. I wonder what this bodes for the pursuit of truth?
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