Religion Dispatches
…give our people a future of prosperity and security the United States and India stand united.” He went on to praise the people of Mumbai, evoking Gandhi and particularly noting that the strength of India—like the strength of the USA—lies in diversity, which was on full display during those attacks when we saw “Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, protecting each other, saving each other, living the common truth of all the world’s great r…
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…e lower. India and United Kingdom: 50 years after decriminalization in UK, India hangs onto colonial era law At The Times of India, Vikram Doctor notes that the United Kingdom’s parliament voted to decriminalize homosexuality in 1967, asking why India “still hangs on to this colonial legacy” fifty years later. His piece includes history about the anti-sodomy law in the U.K. and the “morass of misuse, malice and misery” that it engendered, includin…
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…executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, who regularly travels to India for nonviolence trainings. In India, “their action is a little bit more spontaneous.” A New Revolution The March 10 National Uprising Day protest in Delhi was bigger than ever this year. Tempa Tsering, the official representative of the Dalai Lama, says more than 1,000 gathered in front of the United Nations’ office to mark the anniversary of the 1959 rebellion in Tib…
Read More…scrimination and harassment, they also have an important symbolic place in India.” The Times of India reports, The Rajya Sabha on Friday unanimously passed a private member’s bill seeking equal rights with dignity for transgenders, who are widely scorned, ostracised and ghettoised in the country. It was historic not only because it was the first private member’s bill to be passed in the Upper House in 36 years, but also since it might turn out to…
Read More…n the country’s Prime Minister has sent a pair in. The connections between Turkey and Bosnia run deep. For one thing, Bosnia was part of the same imperium as Turkey, and many of the Ottoman Empire’s sultans had Bosnian wives and mothers. (It’s a distortion of history to call the empire “Turkish”—its army and bureaucracy was heavily Eastern European.) Millions of Turks are descendants of Balkan refugees who retreated with the Ottoman Empire. Though…
Read More…ay Turkish membership talks go forward, and enough Europeans are convinced Turkey won’t dilute whatever it is they want Europe to be. By the time Europe gets over its economic crisis and Turkey clears its hurdles, this country may well be more populous than Germany, making it the largest in the EU. Would Europe be okay with that? The Turks I’ve talked to so far, an admittedly small sample, generally feel Europe will accept them, because it must….
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…law. More background from Human Rights Watch: The law, section 377 of the Indian penal code, punishes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with up to life in prison. The law had been struck down in 2009 by the Delhi High Court, which said the law was a violation of fundamental rights to equality, nondiscrimination, life, and personal liberty guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The court had noted how criminalization of same-sex rel…
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…There were fliers portraying President of the current opposition party in India, the Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi and Hillary Clinton as horned demons on a “witch hunt” to “get Modi” and his party for alleged involvement in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Modi governed the state during the violence that took the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. In stark contrast, there were large posters displaying Trump in what a…
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…yria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia who have left their home countries for Turkey and are now waiting to be granted refugee status.” Said Parsi: Turkey is not a safe country for homosexuals. So they become more conservative, and there is a lot of religious homophobia. Even Turkish LGBTs are not safe in their own country, so for someone who is foreign, who is a refugee, who doesn’t have support or an understanding of the Turkish language, there are…
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…, our institutional leadership is some years behind the conversation. What Turkey was five years ago is not where Turkey appears to be headed five years from now. Why should American Muslim organizations endorse this? When I want American Muslims to be more politically involved, to talk to people who don’t talk to us, it’s not in order for us to accept their narratives uncritically. But to be willing to hear them, in order that we too may be heard…
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