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Global LGBT Recap: Francis’s First Year; Homophobia and Development; African Activists Push Back

By Peter Montgomery

…aganda” legislation being introduced throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Nepal: Equality Activist Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize The Hindustan Times reports that Sunil Babu Pant, “Nepal’s most prominent crusader for equal rights to sexual minorities,” has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Pant founded the Blue Diamond Society, a pro-LGBT group that “is responsible for the 2007 Supreme Court ruling which directed Nepal government t…

News Flash: Buddhist-Majority Countries Just as Complicated as Muslim-Majority

By Haroon Moghul

…now surfacing. The violence threatens to spread across parts of Southeast Asia, and indeed some incidents in Sri Lanka (a mosque has been attacked) and Indonesia suggest that it already has; the region is a heavily Buddhist, but also significantly Muslim, part of the planet. We can go further back, of course, in the history of religious tension: The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, yet another notch in their brutal belt. But Burma’s Muslims…

Decolonizing Jewish Studies Part II: A Response to the Backlash

By Gilah Kletenik and Rafael Rachel Neis

…Scholars of Jewish cultures in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, continue to redress these lacunae. Racism, cisheteronormativity, ableism, and classism pervade all academic disciplines. Particular to Jewish Studies is its conferral of authority on people it qualifies as “Jewish.” We’ve benefited from this privilege and also from being Ashkenazi. We worry that an imagined continuity between contemporary “Jewish” scholars and the Jew…

S.O.S.

By Amina Wadud

…a special breakfast food. People eat what they ate through out the day. In Asia, for example, this must include rice. I hate rice, so I would almost feel like I had no option for suhur if I did not go with my own cultural specificity. I also go with my own personal preferences, even if they are counter productive to the rest of the day, according to the medical experts. Like that cup of tea. I have only one cup of caffeinated tea each day and that…

RDBook: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa

By Luke Ssemakula

…Africa; and, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines in Asia. Each study in the project addresses the extent to which evangelicalism, a religious movement based on biblical orthodoxy, has helped or hindered the inauguration and consolidation of the democratic movement in the global South. This newest volume, on Africa, is edited by Oxford emeritus Terence O. Ranger, and it complements the great work being done by such eminent re…

The New Church: Sexual and Ethnic Diversity… and Drums!

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ost widespread religious instruments in the history of the world. In South Asia, the great Shiva plays one in his role as Nataraja, “Lord of the Dance.” The deity “Universe” plays one at the beginnings of creation in Siberian Koryak mythologies. And they show up in ancient Chinese and Native American traditions at the beginnings of the earth. Which is to say nothing of the myriad religious rituals in which drums are played, from Tibetan Buddhist t…

You’re Using It Wrong: Rachel Held Evans Returns to the Bible

By Eric C. Miller

…if black people are doing interpretation, if people from South America or Asia are doing interpretation, then that’s contextual biblical interpretation. They think this while remaining unaware that all of us are interpreting the Bible in a context. A white man at an evangelical seminary is also in a context. I mean, at this moment I’m watching friends get arrested for protesting the fact that the Trump administration is taking children away from…

Trump Administration Is Not-So-Subtly Christianizing Foreign Policy and Aid

By Murali Balaji

…the U.S. government and prospective donors on persecution of Christians in Asia and Africa. But under previous administrations, the U.S. government—particularly foreign aid and arms—did not directly intervene to promote the narrative of global Christian victimhood. However, under Trump, foreign policy—particularly foreign aid—is increasingly being shaped in a pro-evangelical way. It shouldn’t surprise anyone given Pence’s constant affirmations of…

RD Response to Fox Crit of White Supremacy in Yoga Engages in Victim Blaming

By Rumya Putcha

…hole, this exchange indicates that, for those of us who study modern South Asia and its diasporas, we still have a long way to go when it comes to effectively discussing how, after September 11, 2001 and rising to a fever pitch under the anti-immigration Trump administration, Brown South Asian bodies experience racism in ways that stand apart from the well-documented forms of systemic injustice that fall under the category of “Anti-Black” in the U…

Win For ‘Natural Family’ Crowd at UN Human Rights Council…

By Peter Montgomery

…ikely to usher in a pro-gay party and could make Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.” Ireland: Gender Recognition Bill advances Not long after the historic popular vote to amend the Constitution to recognize marriage for same-sex couples, Irish lawmakers approved the Gender Recognition Bill, which allows transgender people to legally change their gender without medical intervention. Finland: Opponents of marriage equality…