Religion Dispatches
…d fear. I would argue, however, that what we learn is not about ancient or classical Christian or yoga conceptions of the body and self, but rather about conceptions of the body and self that already dominate our contemporary cultural context. In fact, what scholars of yoga today often refer to as “modern yoga,” a pop-culture movement that in many forms competes in the fitness and health global market, has more in common with contemporary consumer…
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…between them.” Without a solution that ends the occupation and the second-class status of Israel’s Arab citizens, it will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to be a liberal Zionist. This tension is slowly but increasingly finding its way into the public discourse via prominent public intellectuals, including journalist Peter Beinart, who led the way with his 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism, warning of drift away from and even hostility…
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…ores lived religion in much the same way the teachers might do it in their classrooms: by inviting people into the classroom to speak about their faiths, and by visiting local sites that are important to faith communities—all the while focused on keeping to an academic, “outsider” (and not devotional, “insider”) perspective. To those of who report on religion and its role in society and culture, it seems clear that a solid education should include…
Read More…te has been shaped across philosophical, ideological, political religious, class, and caste lines, in which sides that have competing interests occasionally join forces or those with similar goals find themselves as enemies. The story begins in the final years of the Indian independence movement, when the divisions among some Indian nationalist groups—particularly within the left—grew into open conflict. In 1946, a Communist-backed revolt of peasa…
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…ned with detention if I didn’t sing gospel songs in my public school music class; and a teacher once asked whether the “chilled monkey brains” scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom accurately reflected Hindu practice. My family didn’t have many friends in the community, so I was an outsider, and often embarrassed to identify as a Hindu. I just wanted to be accepted as an American, because in this country, the dominant narrative has been—…
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…so catches grown-ups speaking earnest nonsense. Virginia Lee Burton’s 1939 classic Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel may be about, as her teacher tells her, “digging the basement of the town hall,” but Ramona knows that her pressing question, namely, “how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?” stands: Ramona knew and the rest of the class knew that knowing how to go to the bathroom was important….
Read More…central religious authority in Islam—no church, no priesthood, no clerical class to govern the religious (and certainly not political) lives of Muslims. . . . The problem is that Islamic doctrine, jurisprudence, and historical practice do, in fact, both assume and fundamentally rely on the existence of a single Muslim polity with authority over Muslims’ religious affairs and the religious scholar class. Ezzat diagnoses this circumstance as a vesti…
Read More…d that you’ll get results much like his: All but one man in the priesthood class said, “Oh, yeah. That’s true. That’s what we believe.” When, at the end of class, Stevens admitted that this was his paraphrase of the doctrine of infallibility as explained by a Catholic encyclopedia , they said something like, “Oh, well, we don’t believe that. That’s popish nonsense.” What Mormons have instead of infallibility is “instrayability,” a coinage by Steve…
Read More…which criminalized “the deliberate act intended to outrage feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.” And Section 295A was indeed subsequently enacted by the British because of the escalation of communal violence involving Muslims, Hindus, and other religious groups. As Shoaib Daniyal writes, Even at the time though, there was unease over the implications of the bill. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was a member of the committ…
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…way from the television or computer or whatever. The rise of Muslim middle classes means very different people have trouble finding the same, frequently Samsung remotes despite allegedly impassable civilizational boundaries. With the rise of a global Muslim middle class, all kinds of people from Morocco to Indonesia will have the same problems we do: Where’s the remote, and why can’t I get myself up to get it? Take that, Samuel Huntington. Sit bac…
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