Religion Dispatches
…oregrounded, and other realities (say, America’s intervention on behalf of Bosnians) are backgrounded or denied altogether. It may also be that they are unknown. In this reading, the Muslim world has been repeatedly menaced, subjugated, or brutally pounded by a malevolent West, which warns, say, of Iranian nuclear menace, even though it was the West that invented nukes, and the democratic and secular United States that used them. On civilian targe…
Read More
…here’s my mother’s recipe, here’s the kind of things we used back home in Bosnia, or back home in Burma. You don’t have to feel like I’m gonna get it right or wrong, I’m going say something bad about God, I’m gonna say something bad about Jesus. It allows a kind of personal basis for conversation. That would be a dream for this kind of work, to help foster a different kind of interreligious dialogue. I don’t know if it will, but it would be fun….
Read More…re was John Paul II’s plea that Muslim women raped during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzgovina should carry those pregnancies to term and turn those rapes into “acts of love.” It is especially in situations of war and massive displacement that girls are subjected to rape. And, not only do religious views on abortion result in abortion denied, US foreign policy contributes to their suffering. According to Save the Children, 80% of war rape victims ar…
Read More…opic.) Because of Serbian complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosniaks, it wasn’t a hard war to sell. But Kosova mattered more to Serbs, arguably, than Bosnia did, many seeing it as the spiritual homeland and national touchstone for their peoplehood. In 1389, some 610 years before that war—a number Muslims might identify with, for entirely unrelated reasons—Ottoman forces inflicted a massive defeat on the nascent Serbian state, making…
Read More
…s in allowing LGBT advocacy groups to register as nonprofit organizations. India: Mother places same-sex matrimonial ad Padma Iyer, a mother in India, garnered international attention when she placed the first same-sex “matrimonial ad” seeking a husband for her son. Some major papers turned down the ad, but Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day agreed to run it. Same-sex relationships have been illegal since a 2013 high court ruling reinstated a colonial-era sod…
Read More…neglects to look at the discrimination harbored within its own walls. The Indian bishops are looking inward. In 1992, the CBCI General Assembly stated: “With a sense of sorrow we must admit that women feel discriminated against, even in the Church.” The Indian bishops recognize that no matter how much work is done on ending discrimination against women in the world, this work does not make much difference without ending discrimination in the Chur…
Read More…egically At least two gatherings in the past week focused on the strategic promotion of LGBT equality abroad. On Friday, December 6, in Washington, D.C., the Center for Transatlantic Relations, which is part of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, hosted a presentation called “LGBT Rights: A Geostrategic Issue for Democracies.” The panel, part of a series of discussions on the topic, featured Elizabe…
Read More…cerns [the march] would provoke clashes between gays and their opponents”. India: Census Documents Nearly 500,000 Hijra We reported in May that India’s Supreme Court had ruled in favor of allowing transgender people to identify themselves as a “third gender” on official documents. Less than 30,000 people used that designation in registering for the recent general election, but data released from last year’s national census – which included a third…
Read More…ent Hinduism or Buddhism, but certainly influence the issue of violence in Indian society. Indeed, if the demand is to quote a prominent public figure who can credibly speak for Buddhists on the topic of violence in India today, then only the Dalai Lama would suffice. (For the curious, his comments are here.) Another commenter noted “the Kakacupama Sutta was not a teaching given to young laywomen.” This is true. Buddhism’s historical emphasis on m…
Read More…, noting the difficulties in getting implementing acts through Parliament. India: Human Rights Watch Urges Repeal of Sodomy Law Human Rights Watch this week said there is an “urgent need” to repeal India’s “archaic” law that criminalizes same-sex relations. Fiji: Prime Minister Dismisses Marriage Equality As Rubbish, Says Couple Should Move to Iceland Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said in response to a suggestion that the country should conside…
Read More