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What Would Jesus Chew?, Bishops Bet on B-Ball, The Incredibly Shrinking Brain

…inals. Is corrupt football coach Jim Tressel an evangelical embarrassment? India’s leading yoga guru, Swami Ramdev, is declaring a hunger strike against governmental corruption. No word on how the guru feels about NCAA recruitment violations. Bernice King left Eddie Long’s church in the wake of Long settling his scandal out of court. Texas is ridding public school graduations of prayers and religious terminology. In New York, a federal court ruled…

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Billy Graham Is Probably Not the Author of His Own “Final Chapter”

…Perhaps there would be fire, smoke, and stench. Graham observed that Gary, Indiana, looked a bit like hell if you peered down from an airplane. But perhaps hellfire was metaphorical. Graham mused, “[Jesus] uses the word fire, and I have often wondered if that is a terrible fire within our hearts for God, for fellowship with God, that can never be quenched. We’ve rejected God. We’ve turned our back on God. We can never know God. … [Hell is] the ban…

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A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

…against his life he would not be attending the Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s premier showcase of Asian literature. Rushdie hid for 11 years after Khomeini’s 1989 public call for his death, only emerging in 2000. Now in 2012 he is threatened again. Unremarked upon in the recent hullabaloo concerning Rushdie was that only a few months ago a religious edict, or fatwa, was issued against another “blasphemous” Muslim author, Rafiq Tagi of Azerbai…

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On the Ethics of the Tibetan Self-Immolations

…f great moral courage. Drawing from earlier scriptures, the fourth-century Indian Buddhist master Asaṅga speaks of a threefold classification of “giving” that includes giving material goods, spiritual counsel, and life. Of these three, Asaṅga considers offering up one’s life to be the highest form of giving. That said, Indian and Tibetan texts also set forth stringent conditions that must be met before an individual is allowed to offer up his or h…

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Sam Harris Says Qur’an “Not That Good”

…shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” It’s amazing how imperialism and racism are so closely intertwined and persistent, and always under a veneer of civilization. I know Harris thinks he is being original and provocative, but at best he is being derivative and puerile. I am more shocked that Sullivan, with his awareness of British history, not only did not see the connection, but gave it a s…

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God Needs No Passport

…as an admittedly checkered but often positive history. The immigrants from India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Ireland I talked with while writing this book are potential partners on all sides of the political spectrum. They ultimately care much more about the bread and butter issues like family, community, and jobs that most of us care about. Anything you had to leave out? Lots. It’s impossible to capture the complexity of people’s everyday lived religi…

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The Risks of Remaining Neutral on Egypt

…Need for Collective Self-Esteem Unlike Third World countries like Brazil, India, and China, many Muslim-majority societies traded their organic traditions for authoritarian states that have brought little economic benefit or sense of dignity. (At least a Chinese citizen can reconcile an absence of political freedoms with an obvious escape from poverty). Egypt is, in this sense, the most excellent example. Hosni Mubarak has presided over the impov…

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The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

…to me. I have never returned to Iran. Sometimes it saddens me that I know India, Thailand, and other countries better than the place of my birth. I have never smelled the air at the Caspian Sea or walked through the bustling streets of Tehran. I have spent my academic career documenting the stories of immigrant Iranians as a way mitigating the absence of a country that is a part of my life, my culture, the language that I speak, and the food that…

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What To Do When Fred Phelps Arrives in Your Neighborhood

…are not limited to hating “fags.” Wikipedia, for example, claims they hate India. And, Phelps’ church itself is pretty darn sure God Hates America (for a variety of reasons like American tolerance of “fags”). And yet, Westboro Baptist is pretty darn fond of the American Constitution since March 2, I suspect.   March 2, of course, was not the first—and certainly not the last—time the Supreme Court has taken or will take a position on picketing. In…

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Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

…phenomenon; variants can be found guarding temples and warding off evil in India, Myanmar, and beyond. But perhaps the most widely-recognized iterations of the mythological beast are the Egyptian and the Greek sphinxes. The Egyptian sphinx typically has a man’s head and a feline body, and serves the benevolent purpose of protection. (It is worth noting that Hegel described the Egyptian religion of which the sphinx was a part as a religion of the r…

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