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Good Hair, Good God! The Divine Politics of African-American Hair

…hat the hair cut for temple sacrifices is now the number-one export out of India. The fact that tonsure, a religious act, has turned into a profiteering scheme is remarkable. But there also exist unscrupulous people who are stealing women’s hair, either while they sleep or in movie theaters where their braids or hair hang over the seats; while a woman is enjoying the latest from Bollywood, someone is cutting her hair and exporting it to be sold in…

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Christianity Today’s ‘Humble’ Hindu-to-Jesus Conversion Story is Still a Story of Christian Triumphalism

…many Hindus living under Christian contexts face. For example, in southern India, where Sankaran (and my parents) hails from, many poor Hindus couldn’t receive an education unless they converted to Christianity. The same applied to countries like Guyana, where my wife’s dad and others of his generation took Christian names for schooling purposes. It was based on the idea that one couldn’t get educated—or enlightened—unless they rejected their iden…

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Op-Ed: God is Green

…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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Heaven On Earth: A Non-Hysterical History of Shari’ah

…ble book would have taken time and money I did not possess. Traveling from India to Egypt seemed to offer a fairly simple way of linking my south Asian heritage with the history of the regions where Islamic jurisprudence came of age. A less tangible motive also helps explain the book’s trajectory. Although it is no bad thing to recognize the diversity and benign qualities of Muslim life—and I hope my book does that throughout—I thought it crucial…

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Tony Perkins Will Fit Right in at Religious Freedom Commission

…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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Fake, Evil, Spiritual, Commodified; What’s the Truth About Popular Yoga?

…tionships to physical sites in London and throughout the United States and India, on websites and in publications, and to other contemporary areas of cultural production, such as yoga studios and public parks. The result was a comparative study of modern yoga, its popularization, and its intersections with consumer culture. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? Unfortunately, pop culture varieties of postural yoga are often dism…

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Sikh Temple Shooting: Two Massacres and the Virtual Transformation of Trauma

…hael Page, was motivated by xenophobia. On the other hand, the massacre in India 28 years ago was a culmination of tensions between the Indian state and the Sikh community. The most sacred of all Sikh places of worship or gurdwara had been occupied by the Indian army under state surveillance in June 1984. The anger at the desecration of the gurdwara found an extreme response when prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bod…

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Mormon-Born Daya Mata Typifies American Yoga

…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…

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RDBook: Bernard Avishai’s The Hebrew Republic

…s its expertise in high-tech. Yet the fact of the matter is that China and India, with their massive populations, have a much bigger human resource pool to draw upon than Israel. If the instability created by constant conflict continues, Israel will continue to see an exodus of innovators and venture capitalists-the very population it needs to retain its market. I say “continues” because the brain drain has already begun. Though Israel experience…

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When Religion Becomes a Trap Rather Than a Safety Net

…she’s really trying. Ironically, it took her going on a Mormon mission to India with her third husband for us to begin to develop a friendship and appreciate what we have in common. Her mission was a public health mission and she wasn’t allowed to proselytize or even say anything about religion in her emails home. As a result, her emails were filled with stories about the people and life in India. I’ve traveled to Africa to write stories on behal…

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