Religion Dispatches
…eartless terrorists who gunned down hundreds of innocent people in Mumbai, India. Have you not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what’s happening right now in our cities? Oh, I know the homosexual “rights” demonstrations haven’t reached the same level of violence, but I’m referring to the anger, the vehemence, the total disregard for law and order and the supposed rights of their fellow citizens. I’m referring to the in…
Read More…e our hunger for inexpensive consumer goods drives industrial expansion in India and China, for whom the United States is the largest export customer. Most of our politicians trade on the illusion that the globalization of American (and American-style) consumerism is synonymous with democratization and social stability. In fact, stabilizing the supply of energy to the transnational economic grid has meant our investing billions to support politica…
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…Travel to other places in the world, like the Persian Gulf, Turkey, China, India, Brazil, and so on and so forth, and people are hungry with ambition, eager to embrace the economic opportunities that our country’s desire for globalization enabled and sustained in the first place. Now, we are turning away; we are scared of monsters whose shadows stretch across the planet. But let me end with a note of hope. Consider that, for most Americans, Shari’…
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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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…vendors. There’s been similar anti-Muslim sentiment and disinformation in India as well. In previous pandemics, particularly Ebola, preparations of the dead were seen as a leading cause of viral spread. While care should certainly be taken with the handling of bodies that have passed from Covid, the risk of viral spread is limited, and cremation is not necessary. The continued practice of forced cremation represents a violation of human rights an…
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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…and practice of widely misunderstood religions. From the ascetic Aghori in India to Vodou in Haiti, from the doomsday cult of “JeZus with a Z” in Hawaii to Scientology in America and Santa Muerte in Mexico, the series takes viewers on an intriguing, and sometimes harrowing, tour of religion in real time—as far from orthodoxy as you can get. A couple of weeks ahead of the show’s March 5th premiere, Reza and I talked about the decline of religious l…
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…mbai attacks were reportedly carried out by Lashkar-e Taiba, which targets India over the dispute in Kashmir, and not al Qaeda. Perhaps in his mind it was all jihad on the news! Well, when I was fifteen you know I had a, I was—I made [a special prayer for guidance] about whether I should you know… should go you know and make jihad in a different country or to make like an operation here you know like, something like Mumbai. You know, it would be s…
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…cropped the Ingres painting to make it more mysterious and suggestive. The Indian edition also has a lovely cover, a painting by Raja Ravi Varma of an Indian woman covered in jewelry and smiling seductively. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? Sure: Anna Karenina. Or The Eustace Diamonds. Or Alice in Wonderland. I always wanted to write a novel, and did write one once, but it was awful (I showed it to some of my fri…
Read More…ury, Sri Lankan Buddhist reformers advocated for establishing Bodhigaya in India and Lumbini in Nepal as the Buddhist holy lands. As the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, Lumbini draws millions of pilgrims from around the world. Although none of the major holy sites in Lumbini were affected by the disaster, Sri Lanka’s generosity to Nepal could be understood as a means for Sri Lankan Buddhists to reasserts their own identity as the custodians and care…
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