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On the Ethics of the Tibetan Self-Immolations

By José Cabezón

…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…

Sam Harris Says Qur’an “Not That Good”

By Hussein Rashid

…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…

God Needs No Passport

By Peggy Levitt

…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…

The Risks of Remaining Neutral on Egypt

By Haroon Moghul

…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…

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

By Saba Soomekh

…s. The concerts were a way of keeping us connected before the dawn of cell phones, the Internet, and Facebook made it so easy to keep in touch. That same group Deadhead friends from high school remain my closest and dearest friends to this day; we are aunts and uncles to each other’s children. (And yes: we all went together to the Santa Clara shows—the Dead’s last in California a week before their last concerts ever in Chicago over the July 4 week…

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

By Jeremy Biles

…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…

The Legacy of Bush, Gambler of Other People’s Fortunes, Is Still With Us

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…where we are going again, is the hottest nuclear zone on earth: Pakistan, India, China, they all have the bomb. I do not rehearse all of this as a morality tale; Dostoevsky would have none of that. “Now, whether gain and profit are despicable things is another question. And I am not going to try to answer it here” (29). I do not say this simply to relive the past either. Just the opposite. I say all of this because it is a cautionary tale for the…

Peter Berger, Sociology’s Defender of God (1929-2017)

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…the absolutists. The discussion came to the case of sati, the practice in India of widow-burning, where the grieving widow was supposed to throw herself onto the funeral pyre of her departed husband and achieve a kind of divine immortality as a result. Berger listened to the cultural defenses of the practice for a moment or two, and then he had had enough. Berger stood up, his voice thundering as he pointed an accusing finger at each of us. “If t…

Taqwacore Roundtable: On Punks, the Media, and the Meaning of “Muslim”

By Shahjehan Khan

…onal connections being made? For example, the UK Asian Underground, the US/Indian Asian Massive [as the MIDIval PunditZ consider themselves to be part of Asian Massive], and the Indian Cyber Mehfil groups are all in communication with one another and often work together on projects. Is there something similar with TQ emerging? BU: Not yet, just some contact with British Asian geezers like Asian Dub Foundation, Fun Da Mental and Alien Kulture. Ther…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

By Michelle Goldberg

…ange. How else could Gandhi believe that he could get the British to leave India, or Martin Luther King convince himself and his followers in the possibility of winning racial equality? Barack Obama became president in part by imbuing millions of individuals with the wild hope that they could change the world. Isn’t that also a kind of positive thinking? Clearly, Ehrenreich is not counseling a widespread embrace of despair, but it still would have…