Religion Dispatches
…s David Noriega and John Templeton report in “America’s Quiet Crackdown on Indian Immigrants,” our government seems to be working with India’s to turn victims of police overreach and repression, many of whom have reasonable and legitimate expectations of asylum, to deny asylum and return them to the very conditions they fled. It is an article that should be read, not least for the fact that this story goes nearly entirely unknown. But I found this…
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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…
Read More…sia (and Turkey, Malaysia, and countries with large Muslim minorities like India), have successfully kept what they wanted of their traditions and integrated what they wanted of other traditions. They are navigating what it means to be modern, which the Arab world is having difficulties with. Because of the popular conflation of Arabs and Muslims, both in terms of number and authenticity, including at bodies such as the Council of Foreign Relation…
Read More…ll Manhattan, Henry Hudson, an Englishman under contract to the Dutch East India Company, nosed the Half Moon through the same Narrows and struggled north on the river that now bears his name. The first group of settlers to disembark in Manhattan were Walloons, French-speaking Belgians, followed shortly by a modest influx of Netherlanders, Germans and French. English Puritans bracketed Dutch settlement on Long Island, while Swedes and Finns became…
Read More…The New York Times reports that during President Obama’s upcoming visit to India, he will not visit a Sikh temple because he might be perceived as Muslim. The idea of president as professor and president as uniter is now officially dead. The mere fact that such a consideration would come into play tells us how much we fail to adequately talk about religion except as a political tool. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama’s supporters have co…
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…the Mormons of Islam by some) was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, India in 1889 during the British Raj as an effort to reform Sunni Islam. Most traditional Muslim ulema declared Ahmadis kafir (i.e., non-Muslim, or heretics in Christian parlance) because Ahmad’s claim to prophecy after Muhammad was seen as violating the traditional belief in the finality of prophet Muhammad. When the British left India in 1947, Ahmad’s son and successor (“…
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…(for the full moon). Returning to my point, namely that the UAE is a more Indian Ocean-oriented, and South Asian, society than a stereotypically Arab one, this mosque clearly continues in the vein of Mughal and Indo-Islamic architecture and owes far less to traditionally Arab-Islamic architecture. Compare to the Taj Mahal, and Badshahi and Jama’ Mosques of South Asia (India and Pakistan.) Another argument for Shah Rukh Khan as Caliph. ⬆ The…
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…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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…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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…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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