Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet promo code in india Norway

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

…than their salaries might suggest. At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Revenue Service to include their counterparts in other religious traditions.) The first subsection, 107(1), allows a minister to exclude from taxable income…

Read More

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

…. So it’s more about representation and identity than it is about specific codes or laws.” Even though some political activists in Middle Eastern and North African countries promote “Islamic law” in reaction to the imposition of European-style government and legal systems on them, there is no single school of thought on what shari’ah, or divine law, is or means—and there is no single, accepted legal code. “If Islamic law were some book where you c…

Read More

Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

…me; the date was chosen to commemorate the victims of the 2011 massacre in Norway that claimed 77 lives. Jordyn Taylor reported on findings from Erik Lamontagne, a researcher with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS that “homophobic laws and social norms” against gay men and other men who have sex with men carry an economic cost that could reach $119.1 billion annually. Hannah Harris Green reports on the ongoing legal flight of LGBT…

Read More

Sarah Palin to Tour Israel, Christian-Style

…will visit Israel this week after a stop in India for the luminary-studded India Today Conclave—at which she will deliver a keynote address entitled “My Vision of America.” Palin’s trip to Jerusalem and Nazareth (just after Purim, Queen Esther’s big moment in the Jewish calendar) is probably no more than the usual Republican political stopover to show solidarity for Israel. To her loyal followers, Palin’s pilgrimage will be one more sign not only…

Read More

Why Don’t Muslims Condemn Terrorism?

…l area, unlike Iraq which is an active war zone. In 2002, Gujarat state in India, the home of Gandhi, saw riots over the span of two months that resulted in the death of over 2000 Muslims and the displacement of over 150,000 people. The rate there was also 30 people/day. The complicity of Indian state actors, notably Narendra Modi, resulted in a denial of entry into the US. However, the loss of life over those months has not entered our consciousn…

Read More

Worse Than Madoff: Amway Launches Domestic Revival

…And most of its recent growth, in such developing Asian markets as China, India, and Russia, has been under the Amway name.” Despite hiring marketing executives to help revitalize the relaunch—and despite the fact that an FTC examination into Amway’s business practices concluded in 1979 that it was not an illegal pyramid scheme (because compensation is based on retail sales to consumers, and because salespeople are not paid for recruiting new col…

Read More

Teaching the Dalai Lama’s Monks: Better Religion Through Science

…t of the regular centuries-old curriculum of all Tibetan Buddhist monks in India. Since the Dalai Lama was forced from China in 1959, India has graciously hosted him, the Tibetan government in exile, and thousands of Tibetans, including many monastics in new monasteries and nunneries. Unlike for Westerners, it is relatively common for Tibetans to become monks (even today, 1 in 10 Tibetans do). We just completed our second year of a five-year pilot…

Read More

Eat, Pray, Double-Standard

…asure are frivolous acts — for women. Gilbert has a spiritual awakening in India, having travelled to the ashram of her ex-boyfriend’s guru. Ultimately, Hinduism’s teaching of the sacred in all of us resonates deeply in her. And yet, I must admit, it is much easier to stomach this message when it is proclaimed by the poor masses of India versus from a white woman from the United States. In a similar vein, the depiction of Hinduism in the ashram se…

Read More

Eat, Pray, Trash: What the Critics Don’t See

…xuriates in the rich food of Italy; tries to still the “monkey-mind” at an Indian ashram; and embarks on a torrid love affair with a Brazilian in Bali. But the real journey, she writes, is inward. Italy is explicitly centered on “pleasure,” India on “devotion,” and Bali on “balance.” By the end, Liz has discovered the “physics of the quest”: If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your…

Read More

Is Downward Dog the Path to Hell?

…r evangelical opponents of yoga, part of the problem is that it comes from India. In discussing yoga’s roots in India, he characterizes it as “almost manically syncretistic.” Mohler warns that if that syncretism is allowed to further infect the United States, we will end up living in the unthinkable: a “post-Christian” nation. But this attempt to produce a monolithic vision of yoga ignores the fact that it, like religion itself, is anything but a…

Read More