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Predicting the Future of Religion: A Thought Experiment

…olars have often patronizingly collapsed the distinctions between African, Indian, Asian, and Pacific “indigenous beliefs.” How will westerners react when finally forced to confront these religious systems on their own terms? Stephen Prothero has pointed out that the traditional African religion of Yoruba is one of the world’s largest faiths and in his brilliant new book One Nation under Gods Peter Manseau has shown how the crucial role African re…

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“The Slut Assumption”: Myths About Jewelry Reveal Diamonds Aren’t Always A Girl’s Best Friend

…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…

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Sikh Prof Attacked on Heels of New Study

…only about 20% can identify the country of origin of the Sikh faith (it’s India). 49% of Americans believe “Sikh” is a sect of Islam, and most Americans identify the practice of turban-wearing primarily with the figure of Osama bin Laden, a fact that makes it more believable that in 2008 alone fully 9% of New York City Sikhs said they had been assaulted because of their religion. But it’s not just association with radical Islam and the resulting…

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In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

…LGBTQ employees are treated poorly when it comes to pay, benefits, leave, promotion, and job security. Divide-and-rule is not a new tactic, for it’s well known in the Indian subcontinent that the British pitted one local Raja against the other based on tribe, religion, or caste—among other factors. The same applies to corporations as they stoke divisiveness in society by indulging in performative activism. They misdirect the attention of people t…

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Ask a Muslim: No, Dear Reader, Sex-Obsession Isn’t Confined to Muslim Nations

…s Muslims live in democracies. That includes Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali, Tunisia, Nigeria, etc., most of which are Muslim-majority. Are these perfect? Of course not. But they are democracies, and they aspire to democracy. Many of the countries that aren’t democracies have attempted democratic transitions, and have been actively or indirectly blocked by our country. Which is a democracy. So, why does our democrac…

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Persecuted and Persecutors

…inst Christianity—and the same concern can be raised regarding Hinduism in India and Buddhism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.” Perhaps violence against Christians has increased as the report suggests. However, there is a danger in a one-sided report that names Islamic fundamentalism as the chief cause of the persecution of Christians. This “blame game” breeds more violence and discrimination—only this time Muslims are experiencing the brunt of it. Sin…

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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…

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Rome Has Spoken and Rome Is Finished: The Vatican’s Sexual Abuse Summit ‘Failed Miserably’

…for his subsequent defrocking. Reports of clerics sexually abusing nuns in India and elsewhere are now common knowledge. A page-turner of a study of the incidence of allegedly gay, sexually active, but most of all duplicitous priests in high positions in the Vatican entitled In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy opens another vista. Report of the Apostolic Nuncio to France, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, under investigation for…

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Puritan Narcissus: The Myth of American Exceptionalism

…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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Trump’s Muslim Ban and the History of Stolen Citizenship in America

…e and Chinese Americans, as well as to scuttle the flow of immigrants from India and the Philippines who had been taking laborer jobs from poor whites. Indeed, over the past fifty years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, citizenship for people of color has been under constant attack. Though many of these attempts at disenfranchisement fail, or are overturned by courts, there has been a concerted attempt to use bogeymen (such as minorities…

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