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10 Years Later: An American Muslim Looks Back at Iraq

…the war. My mother’s family (which is, immediately speaking, from northern India) is supposedly descended from an Iraqi who left Mesopotamia around 1250. In Indo-Islamic culture, among others, we have shajaras, literally (family) trees. That’s how we know. This fortunate ancestor (being Arab) spoke Arabic, so he found employment in the service of the Delhi Sultans, and the family line was from then on inseparable from Islamic law, arts and letters…

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When Bad Weeks Happen to Good People

…ing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and yet another mind-numbing gang rape in India. The week quickly got even more devastating with the Boston marathon bombing and the US Senate’s vote not to make it even a tiny bit harder for Americans to buy guns. So much high-profile violence in rapid succession prompted The Onion to cry, “Jesus, this week” (while Jezebel went even further). Such events bring to mind age-old questions of “theological anthropology…

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On the Ethics of the Tibetan Self-Immolations

…f great moral courage. Drawing from earlier scriptures, the fourth-century Indian Buddhist master Asaṅga speaks of a threefold classification of “giving” that includes giving material goods, spiritual counsel, and life. Of these three, Asaṅga considers offering up one’s life to be the highest form of giving. That said, Indian and Tibetan texts also set forth stringent conditions that must be met before an individual is allowed to offer up his or h…

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How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

…ovements were emerging in other traditions in other parts of the world. In India, for example, bhakti movements of social rebellion were erupting throughout the subcontinent, eschewing Brahmanical authority for the fellowship of devotees of a new breed of eclectic saints and teachers who could be outcastes, blind, female, or partly Muslim. Elsewhere in Asia, what has been called a “Protestant Buddhism” was appealing to the masses in the way that a…

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The War on Terror is Over; Tahrir Buried It

…ed when they came to power in the national parliament from 1998 to 2004 in India. Though they did attempt to revise classroom textbooks and privilege the protection of Hindu shrines, for the most part they behaved as most other secular political parties behave when they come to power and are confronted with practical policy choices. In Turkey, the Islamic-leaning AKP (Justice and Development Party) has also been a more reasonable political force t…

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Zeitgeist A Blend Of Skepticism, Metaphysical Spirituality, and Conspiracy

…, Moses is just another in a long line of law givers that includes Manu of India, Minos of Greece, and Mises of Egpyt. (See, they even all start with M, the film points out, suggesting a mysterious connection.) Similarly, the Ten Commandments are a derivative version of passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. For Zeitgeist, there’s nothing new under the sun-worshipers. The Bible is an “Astrotheological Literary Hybrid.” At the conclusion of P…

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Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

…mans had become Islam’s historically most powerful civilization. Along the Indian Ocean rim, as Engseng Ho argues in The Graves of Tarim, a new, peaceful, entirely non-militarized trade linked East Africa to China. (He’s at Duke University.) The artistic and aesthetic legacies from these periods speak for themselves. The Alhambra Palace in Granada, which so inspired Washington Irving. The Taj Mahal in Agra. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The wonderf…

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Arrest the Pope: New Atheist Effort to Seek Justice in Sexual Abuse Crisis Should Be Applauded

…from 1970 to 2003, Pezzotti was in Brazil, where he worked with the Kayapo Indians. Pezzotti went to Italy in 2003, but returned to Brazil in 2008. A few months later, the man he had sexually abused in the United States saw photos of him on the internet and complained to the church. The priest was quickly sent back to Italy. “Father Vijay Vhaskr Godugunuru was forced to return to India and then was transferred to Italy after pleading no contest to…

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Hagee and McCain Part Ways

…xamples that first came to mind started with the letter “I”: Iraq, Israel, India, Indonesia. Of course I quickly thought of exceptions to the rule, like Lebanon, Sri Lanka—and the United States of America. Europeans tell us that they don’t understand why we insist on bringing religion into politics. Their situation is certainly different from ours; according to a 2005 poll, only about half of the people in EU member countries “believe in a god,” a…

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RDBook: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa

…nya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa in Africa; and, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines in Asia. Each study in the project addresses the extent to which evangelicalism, a religious movement based on biblical orthodoxy, has helped or hindered the inauguration and consolidation of the democratic movement in the global South. This newest volume, on Africa, is edited by Oxford emeritus Terence O. Ranger, and it co…

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