Religion Dispatches
…ts in affected countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Yemen. In India, Goldman Environmental Prize winners Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla are battling the environmental and health effects of the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in their community while also trying to hold the company’s current owner Dow Chemical legally accountable for the devastation. The women’s partnership is all the more remarkable because Shukla is Hindu and Bee is…
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…vement’ DeMuth summarized the aims of national conservatism in 2024 as the promotion of “patriotic schooling,” an “end to civil violence and antisemitism,” and a “revival of faith, family and fertility,” while deriding “[anti-populist] elites in Brussels and Washington” along with “our atomised, feminized, self-obsessed culture where autonomy is the holy grail.” The throughline of the opening remarks of both DeMuth and his fellow NatCon leader, Yo…
Read More…own, who were loud and proud political progressives. I did service work in India, Uganda, Kenya, Detroit, and post-Katrina New Orleans. I worked for a nonprofit and a church in inner-city L.A. I was given a worldview that enabled me to make sense of all of the injustice and oppression I saw, and that worldview was Christianity. It was a Christianity different in many ways from the one I grew up with, but it is still recognizably and unabashedly Ch…
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…ation practices took place in a community of aspirants abiding by a common code of conduct and observing a shared set of rituals. While deemed necessary for liberation, meditation practices like mindfulness were not sufficient. The accompanying rules and relationships were just as important. Modern-day mindfulness takes this twentieth-century shift to lay meditation one step further, sanctioning meditation as a technique developed in the midst of…
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…tities and prophets” under articles 98, 160, and 161 of the Egyptian Penal Code. According to Egypt News Daily, the prosecution first sought to charge him in connection with disseminating Innocence of Muslims but when this accusation was proven false, they revised their strategy to target the content of Saber’s video blog. Though sentenced to three years and released on bail he was subsequently locked up due to a clerical error before being releas…
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…ely and help people think imaginatively? Or does he focus on impieties and promote the virtues of paraphernalia like the dress code and the mandatory length of facial hairs? If the imam is as wise as the religious leader in the Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, it will be a huge step up. Mosque committees share their burden of responsibility too. Often they appoint preachers by applying the lowest and cheapest standard; theological div…
Read More…hich are contrary to their faith. Nor do we require evidence that schools ‘promote’ other faiths. “Instead, inspectors must ensure that pupils are able to express views which are neither intolerant nor discriminatory towards others. Tunisia: Trans Person Sparks Debate with TV Appearance Al Arabiya news reported on Sunday that a trans person appeared on a popular Tunisian television talk show. Born “Leila”, but going by the name “Jalel,” the transs…
Read More…than ever to set Cameroonians against each other, ignoring its mission to promote love, tolerance and peace. Has history not taught it a lesson? From slavery to the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide — now it’s the turn of homosexuals. If Pope Francis seems to have a more conciliatory approach to the subject, it is clear he is struggling to implant this approach within the church he leads. Georgia: Church officials oppose marriage equality, ask po…
Read More…gesture. More than that, it’s part of a healing process that includes toning down eid celebrations; though India seemed hopelessly torn apart just a couple of weeks ago, Indian Muslims are pulling together with other Indians to help heal their country and the people they share it with….
Read More…serve in the military, and the Ministry of Education requires textbooks to promote tolerance for gays and lesbians. In recent years, legislators here have passed protections for gays, including a law against workplace discrimination. A bill to legalize same-sex marriage has been introduced in Taiwan’s legislature, although it still faces strong opposition from Christian activists and their allies in the governing Kuomintang…. Religious life here,…
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