Religion Dispatches
…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…
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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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…sm: In my mind, I’m part of the story of America, I’m part of the story of India, and I’m part of the story of Islam. It was in the Holy Qur’an, which is the book that animated my ancestors, that I found the fullest description of that and that I found language that I considered home…. I love America because it gives me, the child of immigrant Muslim parents from India, the chance to participate in its progress and to carve a place in its promise….
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…What sparked your interest? It began with the Sikhs. I lived with Sikhs in India and admired them, so I watched with horror as an awful spiral of violence between Sikhs and the secular state some 20 years ago led to thousands of deaths and the killing of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. So I went to India—and then to the Middle East and many other areas of conflict around the world—to understand why. The questions I had then are the same questions I…
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…felt that “they are not morally obliged to help somebody in severe need in India, even though to do so wouldn’t cost them much, compared to only 22% of Christians who respond the same way (a difference that is easily statistically significant).” He continued: In other words, the data shows that people who self-identify as Christians are considerably more likely to think there is a moral obligation to help somebody in severe need (in India) than p…
Read More…nal Commission for Public Performances in the Dominican Republic announced today that they were banning a September 13th Miley Cyrus concert for, among other things, promoting lesbian sex.” “The National Commission for Public Performances in the exercise of the powers given by the Constitution of the Republic through Regulation 824 of Law Number 1951Article 4306 – the purpose of which is to prevent public performances that offend the morals, good…
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…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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…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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…, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, and Vladimir Putin in Russia. No surprise that one of the first responses around the world to Trump’s victory were scenes of cheering right-wing Hindus in India and admiring Russians in Moscow. One of the first notes congratulating Trump came from an enthusiastic Duterte in Manila who only weeks earlier called Barack Obama a “son of a whore.” Now that the have-nots h…
Read More…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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