Religion Dispatches
…s David Noriega and John Templeton report in “America’s Quiet Crackdown on Indian Immigrants,” our government seems to be working with India’s to turn victims of police overreach and repression, many of whom have reasonable and legitimate expectations of asylum, to deny asylum and return them to the very conditions they fled. It is an article that should be read, not least for the fact that this story goes nearly entirely unknown. But I found this…
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…rcent of the population, as opposed to the more sizable Muslim minority in India—as an example of the commission’s particular concern over anti-Christian propaganda and legislation. While Obama-era appointees introduced a broader spectrum of ideological stances and religious affiliations to the commission, its membership nevertheless remained largely Christian and conservative enough to maintain the commission’s status quo. “I think the legislativ…
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…documentary informs us that the hair cut for temple sacrifices is now the number-one export out of India. The fact that tonsure, a religious act, has turned into a profiteering scheme is remarkable. But there also exist unscrupulous people who are stealing women’s hair, either while they sleep or in movie theaters where their braids or hair hang over the seats; while a woman is enjoying the latest from Bollywood, someone is cutting her hair and e…
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…a psychiatry degree at Moscow State University, and then travelled around India and Japan, ultimately settling in China to study Chinese herbs. “In the mid-1990s,” reports the site, “Dr. Dabic” returned to mother Serbia for good.” The website concludes by asserting that he has since “emerged as one of the prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy and macrobiotic diet in the whole of the Balkans.” And, to top it all off, Dr…
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…ditional belief in the finality of prophet Muhammad. When the British left India in 1947, Ahmad’s son and successor (“Khalifa” in Arabic) moved the community’s headquarters to the Islamic state of Pakistan where, over time, the growth in political stature of Islamic parties translated into numerous anti-Ahmadi laws. Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims by the national parliament in 1974, and, in 1984, Ordinance-XX made it an offense for Ahmadis to ev…
Read More…n a suspended sentence and probation. A controversial religious figure in India claims a video showing him in a sexual act with two women is fake. The swami, who has a huge following in southern India and missions in several countries, was arrested on obscenity charges and has since stepped down from his leadership position “to live a life of spiritual seclusion for some indefinite time.” Although scientists haven’t weighed in on the matter yet…
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…a body of work. Again and again, Cole writes, McCurry’s photos show modern India at its more colorful, traditional, and quaint. His framing edits out the cellphones and shopping malls in favor of the saris and oxcarts. In small doses that’s fine, Cole writes. But in aggregate, it becomes a kind of thesis: Any given photograph encloses only a section of the world within its borders. A sequence of photographs, taken over many years and carefully arr…
Read More…The New York Times reports that during President Obama’s upcoming visit to India, he will not visit a Sikh temple because he might be perceived as Muslim. The idea of president as professor and president as uniter is now officially dead. The mere fact that such a consideration would come into play tells us how much we fail to adequately talk about religion except as a political tool. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama’s supporters have co…
Read More…ll Manhattan, Henry Hudson, an Englishman under contract to the Dutch East India Company, nosed the Half Moon through the same Narrows and struggled north on the river that now bears his name. The first group of settlers to disembark in Manhattan were Walloons, French-speaking Belgians, followed shortly by a modest influx of Netherlanders, Germans and French. English Puritans bracketed Dutch settlement on Long Island, while Swedes and Finns became…
Read More…sion talking about the LGBT people being less than human. For example, the number two person in the state broadcasting company – actually now he’s the number one person – hosted a show devoted to the question of whether it was enough to protect our children to ban homosexual propaganda or whether more needed to be done. He argued that more needed to be done. He said and we need to outlaw blood and sperm donations by them. And if they die in car ac…
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