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Is Monsanto Satan? The Pleasure and Problem of Conspiracy Theory

…) I knew Monsanto sues farmers into oblivion, caused a rash of suicides in India, suppresses negative media coverage, and pays politicians, and scientists to lie on its behalf. But there was one story I didn’t believe, because I knew it wasn’t true: Monsanto hadn’t paid me. So I did what any academic or journalist would do, and started learning more about the company that supposedly had me on its payroll. In the process, I discovered that very lit…

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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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Mini-Review of A Jihad for Love

…umerous awards including Best Film at the Tri-Continental Film Festival in India and Best Documentary at Turin LGBT Film Festival. The film explores the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in several different countries, portraying jihad not as a holy war but as a struggle to reconcile one’s faith with one’s sexuality. The film doesn’t feature experts or religious scholars, but rather individual women and men who are trying to find their place in a f…

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When Religious Disagreement Seems the Least of Our Problems: The Future for “Interfaith” in a Divided Society

…ement, but Patel has been anointed as the figurehead of something. Born in India and raised a Muslim in Illinois, Patel experienced racist and Islamophobic bullying as a child. In 2002, he founded Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit that supports interfaith organizing on college campuses. Today, he runs the IFYC, writes books and articles, and speaks on campuses. He also served on Barack Obama’s faith council. Interfaith Leadership is a business-sc…

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A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

…against his life he would not be attending the Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s premier showcase of Asian literature. Rushdie hid for 11 years after Khomeini’s 1989 public call for his death, only emerging in 2000. Now in 2012 he is threatened again. Unremarked upon in the recent hullabaloo concerning Rushdie was that only a few months ago a religious edict, or fatwa, was issued against another “blasphemous” Muslim author, Rafiq Tagi of Azerbai…

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Trump Administration Is Not-So-Subtly Christianizing Foreign Policy and Aid

…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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CERN: Where Particle Physics Collides with Human Sacrifice (Apparently)

…g around a statue of Shiva (a gift from the Department of Atomic Energy of India). A woman in white is brought forward and stabbed, prompting the anonymous cameraman to flee in terror. The Telegraph noted the cameraman’s reflection in the office window suggests that he is also wearing a ritual cloak and likely a co-conspirator. CERN administrators have dismissed the footage as a hoax and opened an internal investigation. But many remain puzzled as…

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Trump’s Muslim Ban and the History of Stolen Citizenship in America

…e and Chinese Americans, as well as to scuttle the flow of immigrants from India and the Philippines who had been taking laborer jobs from poor whites. Indeed, over the past fifty years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, citizenship for people of color has been under constant attack. Though many of these attempts at disenfranchisement fail, or are overturned by courts, there has been a concerted attempt to use bogeymen (such as minorities…

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17 Reasons Why Women Wear Headscarves

…Sufi Muslims believe that both men and women should cover their heads. In India and Pakistan, for instance, men usually wear skullcaps during ritual prayer.) So, many women who do not wear head-covers all the time may do so for religious occasions, or when inspired to do so. 3.) Head-covers convey a message of purity and godliness to many observers. Different traditions of religious iconography use mantles and other head-covers to symbolize purit…

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Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence

…hism across Mongolia, Tibet, Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India. Our intention is not to argue that Buddhists are angry, violent people—but rather that Buddhists are people, and thus share the same human spectrum of emotions, which includes the penchant for violence. Although the book only arrived at bookstores last month, it apparently touched some nerves in the academic community before its release. Some have objected to the cov…

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