Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet india promo code East Timor

Ponzi Pastor, Bacon Terrorism, & Spiritual Jewelry

…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

Election Update: Oklahoma Bans Shari’ah Law

…at we already have interpretations of Shari’ah law in our country; or, at least, interpretations of the personal, moral, and ethical components of the law, operating off of individual choice and will. When Muslims pray, they are following interpretations of Shari’ah. Fasting in Ramadan. Giving in charity. Even a smile, the Prophet Muhammad said, is charity. So what this means in real terms is entirely beyond me, but I am amused that Oklahomans wou…

Read More

Evangelical Islamophobia as American as Apple Pie

…rence in Lucknow in 1911 called for the Christianization of the Muslims of India. More recently, the 9/11 attacks, according to Kidd, “Re-energized those familiar themes of Muslim conversions and Islam’s place in the end times, two themes common in American Christian rhetoric, even before the American Revolution.” And while he doesn’t dismiss the powerful effect of the 9/11 attacks on American public opinion, Kidd takes the long view, tracing the…

Read More

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

…wo dozen or so people from various walks of life from Arizona to Ithaca to India on Parker’s reflections and questions. And it would have been nearly unimaginable that I would have had the opportunity that unfolded through the day to interact with the renowned thinker himself. I’d add that the Pope’s worry that digital communication is marked by “the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false…

Read More

You Are Not Your Star Sign

…his arms. Ophiuchus has long been part of sidereal astrology (dominant in India, among other places), but absent from the traditionally twelve-signed tropical system most popular with American newspapers until now, with the revised map of the night sky and its influence on human destiny. Just as the revision of the Zodiac had induced popular outcry—people who had long self-identified as melodramatically emotional Pisces were suddenly told, for in…

Read More

Raelian Swastika Campaign Calculated to Stoke Controversy

…oses. I witnessed another example of “swastika-phobia” on a trip to Kochi, India, once home to a sizable population of Indian Jews, a part of which is still known as “Jew Town.” I overheard an American tourist exclaim with alarm, “I was in Jew Town, and there were swastikas everywhere!” When her friend tried to explain that in Kochi the swastika is a symbol of Hinduism and not Nazism, she responded, “I know, but still!” Because the swastika inspir…

Read More

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

…versity is important to build strong and sustainable communities. But, at least at first, people tend to “hunker down” with those very similar to themselves and gaze upon others with suspicion. For diversity to flower, individuals must meet and learn from one another. Similarly, in Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, Ashutosh Varshney theorized that the likelihood that inciting events would lead to widespread or long-term…

Read More

Cyclops Baby of the Apocalypse? Another Day in ISIS Fundamentalism

…ld born in 2008 in Bolivia and another child that died in 2006 in Chennai, India. As for the Dajjal, hadith describe him as being blind in his right eye—not a cyclops. Of course this rumor is no more absurd than the American obsession with the antichrist, which has equated Proctor & Gamble, Ronald Reagan, and even Monster energy drinks with the Beast described in Revelation. Prior to reports of the birth of the false prophet, there were unconfirme…

Read More

Forced Cremation of Covid Dead in Sri Lanka Further Marginalizes Muslim Community

…Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers), which killed at least 40,000 people in the last five months alone by conservative UN estimates, there was a global push for justice, human rights, and reconciliation on the island. Instead, what seems to have happened is that the government and Sinhala-nationalist elements in the country have taken advantage of the crisis in order to target a minority population. There are many reasons to b…

Read More

Duterte Cites Catholic Heritage in Opposing Marriage Equality, and More in the Global LGBT Recap

…aysia: Censorship board reverses itself, allows showing of Beauty and the Beast Disney reported that “Beauty and the Beast” will be shown in Malaysia even though it resisted censors’ initial demand that a scene with a brief “gay moment” be removed. Tourism Minister Seri Nazri Aziz had said it would be ridiculous to ban the film. But as the BBC notes, the movie “has also raised hackles elsewhere”: In neighbouring Singapore, where sex between men is…

Read More