Religion Dispatches
…ern celebrity to don a bindi, or Coldplay the first English artists to use India as an exotic backdrop, the backlash from the Indian community was fierce. *** Breanna grew up in an atheist household in San Francisco, but lately she’s been searching for something more. “I’m in a physics program right now, and the more advanced you get in this stuff, the more you have to just shrug and admit you don’t know. So I started casting out for something to…
Read More…stice for Sisters criticized “dehumanizing” media coverage of the arrests. India: Legislature Rejects Decriminalization, UN Official Wants Court to Make ‘Enlightened’ Decision The legislature once again voted down a bill to decriminalize homosexuality. Juan Mendez, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment told Firstpost this week that he hopes the Supreme Court of India, which is reconsi…
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…Only recently, when the lesbian premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne visited India, the Sikh priests announced that she won’t be honoured at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar. However, several prominent Sikhs in Canada have been consistently supporting the rights of the gays and lesbians in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights that guarantees equality to visible minorities. Norway: Catholic Church May Stop Perf…
Read More…at his mother called their “ignorance” and “baggage” that they “bring from India.” They also began attending meetings of PFLAG in Toronto. May Warren wrote about the couple in The Star in April: Growing up in India, the Agarwals said, had no exposure to LGBTQ people and didn’t think that they knew any in their Canadian community. But once Rishi came out, they realized five of their friends’ sons were also gay. “Nobody would talk about it. They jus…
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…mass religious violence around the world in settings as diverse as Egypt, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. At first blush, it may seem that the United States shares little in common with these developing countries. Yet I have found unsettling similarities. In all these countries, the widespread adoption of a more militant approach stemmed centrally from fears that a historically and culturally dominant religious group was in danger of los…
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…ind him. He holds in his right hand a ghostly “Q+” (according to some, the code name Trump himself uses when he posts on Q message boards) and the text reads “The World Will Soon Understand/Nothing Can Stop What is Coming,” a direct reference to “The Storm.” As I wrote back in 2020: The QAnoners’ apocalypse, unsurprisingly, is one of political partisan violence, culminating in “The Storm,” when all of the so-called “deep state leaders” will be arr…
Read More…e insist that it is. Terry Jones is a despicable man, and the marauders in Afghanistan who killed UN workers and others have committed unspeakable crimes. We can agree that both things are true, and also agree that Jones’ Qur’an burning was unpopular but protected free speech, and that the angry mobs in Afghanistan don’t represent all Muslims. If you want to game all the possible Constitution-threatening ramifications of the Obama administration’s…
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…as an unexpected site of war, because it was “civilized,’’ unlike “Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades.” Though D’Agata provided a formulaic apology soon thereafter, if not for the failure to recognize that the lack of “civility” in Iraq and Afghanistan could be attributed to US-led war, then because his choice of words revealed the mindset of many, from celebrities to individuals, who’ve converged to provide an outpouri…
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…s weak and the rest of the world knows it. Boykin cites US withdrawal from Afghanistan as the worst failure in US history which, as Chang confirms, encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine and has made China bolder in its threats to invade Taiwan. Youssef cheers the efforts of missionaries to convert Afghani civilians to Christianity in the two decades since the US invasion of Afghanistan, and argues forcefully for Christian Afghanis to be resettled an…
Read More…or the Qur’an-burning Terry Jones, the murders of UN workers and others in Afghanistan proves his point: that Islam is a violent religion. Jones apparently sought such a response. “There was somewhat of an awareness that there could be a violent reaction,” he told a British news service today. In a press release distributed through the Christian Newswire service, Jones issued a statement defending his Qur’an burning on the grounds that the resulti…
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