Religion Dispatches
The news has hit most of the major papers in India and the United States. Under threat from a small group called Shiksha Bachao Andolan, Penguin Press has withdrawn Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Read MoreSunando Sen’s death was more than a case of mistaken identity.
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Something is deeply wrong when the burden remains exclusively on the community itself to conduct all of the outreach, to articulate its values and defend its contributions to the rest of society. Should the educational burden be entirely on the community? There is a deep isolation, not to mention exhaustion, in that “cultural tax”—especially after a tragedy. Do we as Americans simply leave the community to articulate itself to its neighbors? Do we ask them to teach us at the same time as they are burying their dead? Or are there ways that fellow travelers can participate in the educational process?
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The Gainesville event might be the final culmination of the age of hijackers, where a small group’s manipulation of a powerful vehicle has far-reaching disastrous effects. Only in this case, the vehicle is the Qur’an, not an airplane. And the manipulation need only be virtual. Never has book burning been so effective without even occurring. Symbolic actions on the internet and their consequences in the real world now occur almost simultaneously. And the threat of a symbolic gesture and an actual one become one and the same.
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Compassion is not just a sloppy emotional bonhomie; it requires a serious intellectual effort to learn about one another, even if it’s unflattering to ourselves. RD contributor and religion scholar Laurie Patton interviews Karen Armstrong upon the launch of her global call to action, the Charter for Compassion.
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In their campaign to malign Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Republican senators have confused empathy for sympathy, blatantly distorting the meaning of a word for political purposes.
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Buying locally reminds us that purchasing is a mythical act that cements us to community in some magical way. But what if the very morality of a “local” act is being marketed in its own right? Is it just as moral to help a Palestinian cultural center build community as it is to buy Cisco products whose ads promise the same?
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Though many have already sought to draw comparisons between Mumbai and 9/11, the most striking thing about the horrific attacks in Mumbai is the local sense of place that that the terrorists tried to destroy.
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Radovan Karadzic has been hiding in plain sight as a New Age healer…
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When do seemingly manageable ideological differences within a functioning democracy become something more treacherous?
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