Religion Dispatches
…es with women-only mosques, including mu’adhan and imamahs, like China and India. Some countries have fewer restrictions, like Indonesia. It is so good to be in places like this because when it is suppose to be for the worship of Allah then, how is that man can get in the way? But we know the drill. Thanks to all who commented on these and other entries, like Houda, and mairedubhtx. Perhaps when Ramadan is over I can start making my reply on the b…
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…a matter of fact, we’re seeing something of that with the sex selection in India and China, almost eugenic kind of selection. Walter: And the whole health care thing where rich people have access. That’s got to make a difference in longterm maintenance of genes and all that. Dan: That’s a trend that’s been accelerated, but it’s by no means a new one. I remember someone saying that we all have some royal blood in us because royalty tends to survive…
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…ed States was the ability to develop our own identity. I was brought up an Indian Muslim. There were so few of us Indians in the U.S. then that if you saw a woman in a sari on the other end of the shopping mall, you went running over to introduce yourself and, a day or two later, your whole families were having tandoori chicken picnics together. I was about 8 or 9 when I discovered that Hindus and Muslims were not divisions of the same religion. I…
Read More…s several instances where textbooks included the Muslim attack on Delhi in India in the 14th century: “As many as 100,000 Hindu prisoners were massacred before the gates of the city.” TFN recorded Friday’s public debate. Here is a clip of a woman defending the resolution, in which she suggests that all textbooks should come with warning stickers so people know of a book’s “biases” before they ever open it. Notice that she only says what she belie…
Read More…oatian, Farsi (Persian), Fijian, Haitian, Hiligaynon, Hindi (Fiji), Hindi (India), Hmong, Ilokano, Indonesian, Kosraean, Laotian, Malagasy, Malay, Marshallese, Mongolian, Navajo, Palauan, Papiamento, Pohnpeian, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Tahitian, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yapese I’ll also be thinking about local translators sitting in their home countries, relaying…
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…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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…wn Planet Probably a third of the world’s Muslims live in or come from the Indian subcontinent, such as this writer, descended from the steamy plains of the Punjab but raised in gelid New England. And South Asia’s a part of the world we never stop hearing about. Of course, most of this attention is directed to Pakistan, so let’s start there. In Silent Waters, we follow a young man from a small village impressed by the Islamist message coming from…
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…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…
Read More…government—particularly foreign aid and arms—did not directly intervene to promote the narrative of global Christian victimhood. However, under Trump, foreign policy—particularly foreign aid—is increasingly being shaped in a pro-evangelical way. It shouldn’t surprise anyone given Pence’s constant affirmations of being a Christian first, while Pompeo has openly embraced a hardline Christian worldview that maligns non-Christians. Pompeo and Pence al…
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…tion that dates, according to a brief history, to the late 19th century in India. Capitalizing on the moment “mindfulness” is having, “heartfulness” seems designed to fit easily onto the menu of Western spiritual aspiration. Moreover, a post from the Heartfulness Facebook page seems to base heartfulness’ worth in its potential value to capitalism, boasting statistics of increased productivity and decreased absenteeism when workers at a Detroit fir…
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