Religion Dispatches
…What sparked your interest? It began with the Sikhs. I lived with Sikhs in India and admired them, so I watched with horror as an awful spiral of violence between Sikhs and the secular state some 20 years ago led to thousands of deaths and the killing of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. So I went to India—and then to the Middle East and many other areas of conflict around the world—to understand why. The questions I had then are the same questions I…
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…, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, and Vladimir Putin in Russia. No surprise that one of the first responses around the world to Trump’s victory were scenes of cheering right-wing Hindus in India and admiring Russians in Moscow. One of the first notes congratulating Trump came from an enthusiastic Duterte in Manila who only weeks earlier called Barack Obama a “son of a whore.” Now that the have-nots h…
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…u Cole. Reviewing photographer Steve McCurry’s new collection of photos of India, Cole makes a distinction between an individual piece and the total sensibility that’s developed by a body of work. Again and again, Cole writes, McCurry’s photos show modern India at its more colorful, traditional, and quaint. His framing edits out the cellphones and shopping malls in favor of the saris and oxcarts. In small doses that’s fine, Cole writes. But in agg…
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…since the 1970s, when fetal sex determination via amniocentesis first hit India.) But sex-selective abortion in the U.S. as “gendercide” is a drumbeat being picked up in the anti-choice community. There a bill to ban sex-selection abortion circulating in New York, and Georgia Right to Life is trying to gather support for similar legislation. Live Action even addresses the issue in a February blog post quoting a Canadian Medical Association Journa…
Read More…India: Talk Show Sets Record Straight — Yoga No Cure for Homosexuality In India, where LGBT people are living with last year’s Supreme Court decision recriminalizing homosexuality, a Sunday night talk show focused on LGBT issues drew nearly 130 million viewers. The show is hosted by actor Aamir Khan, who is a GLAAD “Global Voices” advocate. According to Gay Star News, “The hashtag #FreedomForLGBT became the top trending topic globally on Twitter…
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…ansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, was the second Indian guru (Vivekananda was the first) to travel from India to the United States and to attract a large following of Americans interested in yoga. These gurus taught renditions of yoga that were radically different from the systems of stretching and muscle-building postures meant to function as fitness routines that we so often associate with yoga in the United States toda…
Read More…n a suspended sentence and probation. A controversial religious figure in India claims a video showing him in a sexual act with two women is fake. The swami, who has a huge following in southern India and missions in several countries, was arrested on obscenity charges and has since stepped down from his leadership position “to live a life of spiritual seclusion for some indefinite time.” Although scientists haven’t weighed in on the matter yet…
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…ong” for May and the Conservative Party to be aligning themselves with and promoting “an organization that promotes hatred, homophobia and misogyny born of religious fundamentalism and masquerading as religious freedom.” The UK’s general election will be held on June 9. Poland: Warsaw Pride parade draws crowd in spite of opposition from church, gov’t, nationalists A crowd estimated by organizers at 50,000 people and by police at 13,000 marched in…
Read More…GBT people are converting others into their “ways against nature and God.” Indian High Court Declines to Review Decision Re-Criminalizing Homosexuality On Tuesday, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed petitions that it review its recent decision that reinstated a colonial-era anti-sodomy law. A “curative petition” by the government is still pending. Cyprus: Last European Law Criminalizing Homosexuality Repealed Thirty-three years after the European…
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…rcent of the population, as opposed to the more sizable Muslim minority in India—as an example of the commission’s particular concern over anti-Christian propaganda and legislation. While Obama-era appointees introduced a broader spectrum of ideological stances and religious affiliations to the commission, its membership nevertheless remained largely Christian and conservative enough to maintain the commission’s status quo. “I think the legislativ…
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