Religion Dispatches
…his arms. Ophiuchus has long been part of sidereal astrology (dominant in India, among other places), but absent from the traditionally twelve-signed tropical system most popular with American newspapers until now, with the revised map of the night sky and its influence on human destiny. Just as the revision of the Zodiac had induced popular outcry—people who had long self-identified as melodramatically emotional Pisces were suddenly told, for in…
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…man in a white sari oversees the care of mangled patients at a hospital in India. Maasai tribesman in Kenya sacrifice a goat to God for rain, to the disapproval of a collared Christian priest. There’s a healthy helping of English atheists, each with particular and charming ways of scoffing off the notion entirely. “God is a word,” one of them explains. And then the silence of all eternity passes through snowy Himalayan vistas. It is true. God is a…
Read More…ith Indians, up to a third of the Hindu population in the U.S. is not from India and close to 40 percent of the Indian-American population is not Hindu. Nepal is one of three Hindu majority countries in the world, and in 2015, the country was impacted by a devastating earthquake. To accommodate survivors of the quake, the Obama Administration granted temporary protected status (TPS) to nearly 10,000 Nepalis, most of who are Hindu. Last month, the…
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…ogy that has led to acts of terrorism both within Pakistan and in adjacent India, including the recent attacks in Mumbai. For this reason, a strategy for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and from Iraq, should be a high on the list of objectives for the Obama administration. 4. Become a problem solver not a problem maker. Aside from what is regarded as its military meddling, the other thing that makes the United States appear as an enemy to many Muslim…
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…e large South Asian population in the district, which includes Hindus from India and the West Indies, Sikhs, and Muslims. Jois believes Democrats are ignoring Hindus and other religious minority groups at their own peril. “We all understand that politics works best when everyone’s voice is heard in the process. Yet for far too long, some of the largest-growing groups in New Jersey have been on the sidelines in politics,” he said. “That’s why our c…
Read More…, would have told Gandhi to “get over it” when the British took control of India. Or she would have counseled Martin Luther King Jr. to “get over it” when Bull Connor came after civil rights demonstrators with hoses and dogs. And she certainly would have told women to “get over it” when their right to vote was denied. Apparently, according to Sherrie, now that full rights have been denied, gay people should just go home, redecorate, and forget abo…
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…it meant to stand up to the mighty British Empire that occupied his native India, as well as to apartheid in South Africa.“ Clarkson told Religion Dispatches that that chance encounter was his “opening into the world of politics and clashing religious worldviews as I considered conscientious objection to the war in light of my Christian upbringing and Gandhi’s powerful call to conscience.“ Clarkson has written for Salon, Mother Jones, The Nation,…
Read More…y shrinks and the country has all but been partitioned by sectarianism. In India, a restive young population and dimming economic prospects have helped to fuel the rise of vigilante groups made up largely of Hindu men and tacitly backed by local and state officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Even “secular” rulers and political parties have embraced religious institutions when it suited their convenience, tapping into their deep wells…
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…7th-century treaty between one of the Sultans of Aceh and the British East India Company that guaranteed their independence as “proof” they were not part of the former Netherlands Indies or modern Indonesia. For more than a century, Dutch Christian colonials and Indonesian secular nationalists found it convenient to label the Acehenese as Islamic fanatics, extremists, terrorists—or by whatever term currently in vogue for demonizing Muslim resistan…
Read More…rk than most imagine. Muslims settled in New Amsterdam with the Dutch West India Company as early as the 17th century. Indeed, mosques are nothing new to Manhattan. Two guys walk into a bar… to go to church. The Internet is the next mission field for the LDS Church. “Our leaders were struggling for years to find a more effective, less annoying way to get our message across than knocking on doors,” said Scott Swofford, director of media for the chu…
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