Religion Dispatches
…ivative. But Islam has been in Bosnia for as long as it’s been in much of India, where my family’s from. It’s possible that many South Asians have been Muslim for less time than many European Muslims. The same goes for Istanbul, which came under Ottoman rule after parts of the Balkans. When we travel, we find such assumptions challenged, and we find that the ways in which the world works right now did not necessarily hold true in the past—in ba…
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…convalescence, a dispersed population counting as many people as China or India, made unique by asserted religiosity, new economic success, and heightened political intelligence? Few bother to contemplate. Many perceptions and studies of Islam are paralyzed by teleology. Namely, that there’s one direction to modernity, and it’s Western. The contemporary Muslim is often scrutinized with the same incredulity and dismay that arises when one’s most s…
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…per that showed the effects of fireworks on air pollution during Diwali in India, “fireworks contain harmful chemicals such as potassium nitrate, carbon and sulphur apart from an array of chemicals such as strontium, barium, sodium, titanium, zirconium, magnesium alloys, copper and aluminum powder to create the colourful effects. On burning they release gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.” The study concluded that fireworks contrib…
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…: 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. #2 Confront Death by Avoiding Fritos: The…
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…sis in countries as diverse as Brazil, Central African Republic, Pakistan, India, and Myanmar, where vigilantes from dominant religious communities routinely attack the homes, businesses, and houses of worship of religious minorities with impunity. As I show in my recent book The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, similar dynamics appear to be unfolding in the United States today, where a combination of forces—…
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…slim. Musically, they function in a similar way to qawwals in northwestern India and in Pakistan. Their music draws on Indic and Islamicate sources. Parvathy Baul was the first female Baul I had seen in public, and her music demonstrated the ways that cultures combine to create new forms. The song in the clip below ends with an invocation of figures normally associated with the qawwali tradition, showing how the Baul tradition is still evolving. B…
Read More…rk than most imagine. Muslims settled in New Amsterdam with the Dutch West India Company as early as the 17th century. Indeed, mosques are nothing new to Manhattan. Two guys walk into a bar… to go to church. The Internet is the next mission field for the LDS Church. “Our leaders were struggling for years to find a more effective, less annoying way to get our message across than knocking on doors,” said Scott Swofford, director of media for the chu…
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…M. Hutchens of the Christian Zionist “Jerusalem Connection,” who has been promoting the piece. Why? Bartholomew: “I can see why Freund would enthuse over this, but it’s less clear why a conservative evangelical like Hutchens would want to promote the idea of 500,000 to 1 million Portuguese and Spaniards embracing a religion other than Christianity. Such are the mysteries of Christian Zionism.” Coral Ridge Ministries Produces Is Jesus God?: Since…
Read More…bridge by reminding the jumper of his Christian faith. A former pastor in Indiana is going to trial for 10 counts of securities fraud after he defrauded parishioners in a Ponzi scheme. Archaeologists unearthed an 1800-year-old statue of the Buddha in India. In Iowa, a pastor is praying that the IRS comes after his church for his political campaign against three Iowa Supreme Court judges who ruled to allow same-sex marriages. The American Family A…
Read More…s under Muslim rule, with no mass conversion. Even if we combine Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh again, less than 1/3 of the population is Muslim, for an empire that existed for several centuries, it seems to give lie to your assertion that Muslims are forced to convert people. We can also look at Spain from the 8th-15th centuries, which is considered a golden age for Jews, Christians, and Muslims because no one was forced to convert. There is als…
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