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Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

…e religious, Armstrong explains: Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The Ascent of Intellectual Orthodoxy For most of Western history, religion has been primarily a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. In fact,…

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What a Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist Can Teach Us About Women’s Rights vs. The Religious Right

…of social mores, cultural productions, religious practices, and political codes. As the United States continues under the fraught leadership of Donald Trump, we find new iterations of the “Christian nation,” new connections and clashes between immigration bans, the religious right, and women’s rights. But if oppression relies on strange alliances, so does resistance. Sowing the seeds of liberation often entails looking back to the past and reaffi…

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Selective Sympathy and the Mumbai Chabad House

…finally appeared of the couple, performing a wedding a few months ago, in India. They looked like any one of my nieces or nephews, young newlyweds. Rivkah wears a sleek wig that others—not in the know—might mistake for her own hair (when I was growing up, wigs were more obviously wigs). But I knew Chabad, too, from my own travels. Everywhere I went, when I was still Orthodox, I could count on finding a kosher meal, a hospitable family, through th…

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Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

…ely an extreme version of normal American supremacism, one that explicitly promotes and heightens the U.S.’s routine practices of empire. But it matters greatly whether the American empire tries to work cooperatively and respectfully with other nations instead of conspiring mainly to dominate them. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Middle East as a whole, the legacy of George W. Bush is not very good, and Obama has an overabundance of leftover c…

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“We Found My Father, Except for His Hand”

As we passed by the “Little India” shopping center, the driver of the car next to us began excitedly waving to one of our hosts. It turns out that they knew each other, though the man’s cheerfulness belied his true purpose. He’d been living in America for years now, like tens of thousands of other exiled Bosniaks, and had returned solely for the commemorations at Srebrenica. His father’s body had finally been found; or at least all of it, except…

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Trump, “Big Fan of Hindu,” To Force Thousands of Nepalis Back to Disaster Zone

…ith Indians, up to a third of the Hindu population in the U.S. is not from India and close to 40 percent of the Indian-American population is not Hindu. Nepal is one of three Hindu majority countries in the world, and in 2015, the country was impacted by a devastating earthquake. To accommodate survivors of the quake, the Obama Administration granted temporary protected status (TPS) to nearly 10,000 Nepalis, most of who are Hindu. Last month, the…

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“Burka Avenger”: Pakistan’s Middle Class Gets a Feminist Cartoon

…mics study (PDF) documented an upswing in gender equality and education in India after the arrival of cable television. “Introducing cable increases the likelihood of current enrollment for girls by 3.5 percentage points,” the authors wrote, describing a shift over four times larger than the 0.83% increase created by the Pakistani government between 2005 and 2011. The show could have the same effect in Pakistan, particularly if public interest sta…

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The Ground Zero-Sum Game

…e 1930s (Beau Hunks, among others) to Disney’s more recent Aladdin and the Indiana Jones franchise. It is so natural, so expected, that most of us have no idea how it affects us. I’ve asked my college students what they think of when they see a scene from a movie in which they hear the call to prayer and see a minaret or dome. The answer? “Something bad is about to happen.” Islamophobia can remain in latent form until it is triggered by economic,…

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Tibet is Burning: Is the Freedom Movement Entering a New Phase?

…nt Tibetan history. Thubten Ngodup, a 50-year-old exiled Tibetan living in India, died in the Indian capital, New Delhi, in April 1998 after he burnt himself to protest against the Chinese rule.  The radicalization of monks of such youth certainly raises a lot of important questions. Will there be more suicides in the weeks and months to come, and will it spill over into the exile community? Does the trend underscore the view that nonviolence does…

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Six Overlooked Gems from the Future of World Religions Report

…guess, the largest Muslim population in the world by 2050 will actually be India. 2008 Summer Olympics – Opening Ceremony – Beijing, China 同一个世界 同一个梦想 – U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program – FMWRC. Photo via U.S. Army/Flickr 3. Because China: That Thing about Muslim Plurality in 2070 Might Not Actually Be True The wild card that could sink item 2: China. Five years ago, China’s Christian population was an estimated 65 million—just 5% of the coun…

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