We've all heard the stories of the religious icons that weep blood or the images of Jesus appearing in grilled cheese sandwiches, saltine crackers and the like, but most of them turn out to be hoaxes or at the very least explained in a manner more, shall we say, scientific than miraculous. But what of a portrait of the Virgin Mary owned by Turkish salesman Esat Altindagoglu and his wife that appears to be "crying" oil?

Since the oily weeping began on Feb. 12, Mr. Altindagoglu has allowed hundreds of people to visit his home near Paris to view the icon, given to his wife by a Lebanese priest four years ago.

From the Telegraph:

[Altindagoglu] said: "As word spread, people started arriving from France, then from all over Europe. I've been having between 50 and 60 people a day turning up for more than three weeks now."

An Orthodox priest had now agreed to say mass at his home in Garges-les-Gonesse this week to thank the Virgin Mary, Mr Altindagoglu said.

He added: "Apparently the next step is to have to weeping witnessed by a bishop so the miracle can be officially recognized by the church."

Not so fast, according to the article, of the hundred of examples of weeping icons over the centuries, only one, Our Lady of Akita in Japan, has ever actually be confirmed as a miracle by the church. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (better known today as Pope Benedict XVI) declared the Akita apparition as a legit miracle in 1988.

We'll keep you posted on this extra Virgin icon...

--Richard Metzger

Photo: People gather around an orthodox icon representing the Virgin Mary "weeping tears of oil" on March 7 in Garges-les-Gonesse, near Paris. Credit: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty.

In the beginning, there was the Word. Then came the Music. After that, the Phenomenon caught fire, and that’s when things got really interesting.

If that all sounds a bit mythical, it’s because it kind of is.

Originally imagined as a fictional world of living on the edge, Muslim punk rockers in Michael Muhammad Knight’s 2003 novel, “The Taqwacores,” Taqwacore has since evolved into an honest-to-goodness, real-life, fight-the-power scene, replete with young and charismatic activists, artists and Punk – the only appropriate soundtrack to any decent rebellion. 

Groups like the Chicago doom-crust band Al-Thawra and Boston-based ska-punkers the Kominas are rapidly gaining attention, as evidenced by August’s Los Angeles Times feature. Omar Majeed’s documentary about the subculture, “Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam,” made Spin magazine’s “Best Music Documentary” list of 2009, and “The Taqwacores,” Eyad Zahra’s feature film adaptation of the novel, premiered this week as an official competitor at the Sundance Film Festival. (For more on that, check out the post at the LA Times’ 24 Frames blog).

Knight, a Rochester, N.Y., native who converted to Islam in his teens and then struggled with an inability to reconcile his faith with his inner Punk, coined the book's title from the Arabic word "Taqwa," which means piety or God-fearing, and “hardcore,” a subgenre of late-70s punk rock. The novel, which he handed out for free in parking lots before finding a publisher in 2004, resonated so strongly with young Muslims dissatisfied with traditionalists in their own communities and clichés foisted on them by outsiders that it became something of a manifesto.

A reluctant guru at best, Knight is uncomfortably aware of the role that has been painted of him in the media as leader of the so-called movement. “That’s just scary to me,” Knight said. “The whole point is there’s not supposed to be a guru. There’s not supposed to be someone’s shadow you’re in.”

Other misconceptions include that of Taqwacore being specifically an Islamic construct. “Everyone assumes we’re all Muslim,” said Marwan Kamil, lead singer of Al-Thawra.  “We’re just a bunch of kids that feel outside, like ‘the other.’ And because of that a lot of different people can identify.”

Another problem is the assumption that all Taqwacores are punk rock boys. “The bands always get reported on, but it’s not just a band scene, and most of us are girls,” said blogger Tanzila Ahmed. And there’s no specific fight, except that against any element of society that would seek to squelch freedom of expression, artistic or otherwise. “Taqwacore is a loose configuration of artists who want to rebel in their own way against any form of fundamentalism, Islamic or not,” added Mila Aung-Thwin, whose company EyeSteelFilm produced Majeed’s documentary, soon to be distributed by Lorber Films.

Members of the unofficial but close-knit Taqwacore community call themselves Taqx, coined by photographer Kim Badawi, whose arresting photographs of the scene compellingly capture the raw energy of the early days, or “scenesters,” as described by Ahmed. Taqx are writers, photographers, musicians and just plain old fans. And like any self-respecting punks, they bristle at attempts by the media to label them as anything so organized or simplistic as a movement or group. Taqwacore is more about community, friendships and “being punk in terms of attitude and individuality,” said Shahjehan Khan, guitarist for the Kominas.

All the same, the Taqwacore crew is known for outrageous behavior and thumbing their collective nose at rules, fundamentalism and the constraints of polite society. Some of their more infamous shenanigans include crashing (and getting booted from) the Islamic Society of North America’s 2007 convention as well as a staging a faked wrestling match between Knight and Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). As Knight put it, “Punk is not about being diplomatic.”

When contacted for comment, Hooper said that CAIR supports “diversity and self-expression” of everyone in the Islamic community, with the caveat that they “hope it stays within Islamic moral and religious guidelines.” As for the staged wrestling match in which he did not participate, and which blew up on YouTube, he was unfazed.

“I’m the spokesperson for a public organization, so I’m fair game,” Hooper said. “I’m used to it. That’s life in the big city.”

Like the Grunge scene in the '90s, commercialization of all things Taqwacore has already begun. Seattle designer Niilartey DeOsu was one of many Taqwacore fans who made the trek to Park City, Utah, with the difference that he didn’t only want to see the film and hang with the scenesters – he also wanted to clothe them.

Knight admitted that his background in the punk scene automatically aligns him against anything to do with fashion, but allowed that, “if someone relates to Taqwacore and wants to bring it into their world, it would be wrong of me to put that down. Taqwacore needs to be as formless and indefinable as possible. I don’t own it.”

It’s anyone’s guess what’s next: The films are both awaiting distribution dates, and none of the bands have been signed to a major label yet. But the sense is that this tiny, fierce scene called Taqwacore will only continue to strengthen and grow.

 “The mother ship is taking off,” said Majeed, laughing.

-- Melissa Henderson

Video: Al-Thawra’s Marwan Kamel says the music video for “Disorientation,” the second track off their latest CD, “Who Benefits from War?” explores the feeling of being “politicized and exotified” as a Muslim in America.

Our favorite story gaining traction around the Interwebs today has to do with Anglican priest Rev. Tim Jones, who more or less told his congregation that it's OK to steal from retail giants like grocery chain Tesco if your family is hungry. Makes sense to us, but Rev. Tim (who is not as liberal as it might seem) has been taken to task by conservative politicians and some in the British media for advocating this teensy-weensy exception to the 8th commandment. Here's what he told his congregation:

"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

"I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift.

"The life of the poor in modern Britain is a constant struggle, a minefield of competing opportunities, competing responsibilities, obligations and requirements, a constant effort to achieve the impossible. For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility."

It's not like Rev. Tim is saying "Go forth and mug people" or that the poor should burgle their neighbor's homes. He's basically saying "feed yourself, illegally if you must, just do it in a way that doesn't harm society." Given the choice between starving or allowing your family to starve, shoplifting a frozen pizza sounds like a morally acceptable no-brainer to us in these troubled times.

What do you think? Tell us in the comments.

— Richard Metzger

Image of Rev. Tim Jones on GMTV program. Credit: GMTV/AP

 
Santería devotee Mary Usigli scatters cowrie shells in an attempt to divine the wishes of the spirits.

It was noon on a Saturday. The lidless toilet and dusty tiles of the cluttered employee bathroom at the back of Botánica San Antonio in Altadena were lit by one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

The santero, a middle-aged Cuban gentleman named Reynaldo Lopez, gently placed the heavy paper bag containing a squawking chicken in a corner and prepared the scene for a limpia, or spirit cleansing, in the Santería tradition.

First, the santero placed an earthenware bowl on the floor. Then he propped a sandstone statuette in the bowl, a figure about a foot tall with eyes, nose, mouth and ears fashioned from pale yellow seashells. He set down some pots of unguents and powders and an aerosol can labeled “Spirit Spray -- Quick Money!”

Next, the santero reached deep into the front pocket of his blue jeans and pulled out more seashells -- cowries, smooth on one side and bisected by tooth-like ridges on the other. At this point, he addressed the recipient of the limpia, in this case, the reporter writing this story.

“Tell Elegguá what you want,” he commanded.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Tell Elegguá,” he repeated. “Tell him what you need.”

“Um, I want to be a good writer. I want to be healthy. I want my mother to be happy.”

The santero knelt down, shaking the cowrie shells in his hands, and chanted in Lucumí -- a mixture of Spanish and Yoruba, a Nigerian dialect. He released the shells in a spray across the floor and examined them closely. Apparently satisfied with the instructions he’d received from the spirits, he turned his attention to the softly clucking bag in the corner of the room.

The chicken squawked angrily when the santero pulled it out of the bag, gripping it firmly by the beak and feet, and, still chanting, jabbed it against the reporter’s forehead, chest and back.

With eyes instinctively squeezed shut as the bird’s huge brown wings flapped in her face, the reporter did as she was told, and turned in circles while the chicken beat its frantic body against her own. The santero subdued the chicken, claws and beak tucked away under his arm, and turned his attention to the statuette of Elegguá, an “orisha” or deity of protection in the Santería religion.

You might not think of Jim Carrey as a spiritual leader. But maybe that's going to change.

At the first meeting of the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment (GATE) -- on the Fox lot on Thursday -- Carrey joined spiritual author Eckhart Tolle, author of "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth." The audience -- a crowd of more than 500, and that during the Laker playoffs -- was ready to hear how Hollywood can make better movies. I mean good movies. I mean movies that are actually about doing good. Like this:

Participants said they hoped their own spiritual practices would free them from the mundane and prurient and lead them to projects with high aspirations, like combating hunger. HBO executive Scott Carlin told the gathering -- which included Garry Shandling, Billy Zane and Jackson Browne -- that audiences were yearning "for the sense of being nourished deeply."

That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a deluge of "Dangerous Minds," "Crash" and "Freedom Writers" knockoffs.  Eckhard Tolle, who closed the evening, said that all kinds of films help people "get out of the box of their minds." 

He cited “Groundhog Day,” “Titanic,” “The Horse Whisperer” and “American Beauty” as movies that incorporated important spiritual themes such as impermanence, stillness and the beauty of everyday things.

Carrey, who spoke earlier, seemed to have a sense of humor about his move from outrageous comedian to in-the-moment spiritual guy. But he was pretty serious about sharing what he's learned, saying, "I want to take as many people with me as I can."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jim Carrey at the MTV Movie Awards, May 31. Credit: Matt Sayles / Associated Press