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Back to School at The First Public School In the Country To Require a World Religions Course

…differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims, to the Hindu values invoked by India’s BJP party, to Biblical allusions that saturate American political rhetoric, survey data shows Americans know almost nothing about religion. Religion scholars (including Diane Moore, Stephen Prothero, and myself) have suggested that change must begin in the schools. The establishment clause does not forbid teaching about religion from a non-devotional perspective and…

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You Are Not Your Star Sign

…his arms. Ophiuchus has long been part of sidereal astrology (dominant in India, among other places), but absent from the traditionally twelve-signed tropical system most popular with American newspapers until now, with the revised map of the night sky and its influence on human destiny. Just as the revision of the Zodiac had induced popular outcry—people who had long self-identified as melodramatically emotional Pisces were suddenly told, for in…

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Stirring Up Trouble: Why Gay People Are Not “Over It”

…, would have told Gandhi to “get over it” when the British took control of India. Or she would have counseled Martin Luther King Jr. to “get over it” when Bull Connor came after civil rights demonstrators with hoses and dogs. And she certainly would have told women to “get over it” when their right to vote was denied. Apparently, according to Sherrie, now that full rights have been denied, gay people should just go home, redecorate, and forget abo…

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Mini-Review of A Jihad for Love

…umerous awards including Best Film at the Tri-Continental Film Festival in India and Best Documentary at Turin LGBT Film Festival. The film explores the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in several different countries, portraying jihad not as a holy war but as a struggle to reconcile one’s faith with one’s sexuality. The film doesn’t feature experts or religious scholars, but rather individual women and men who are trying to find their place in a f…

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10 Years Later: An American Muslim Looks Back at Iraq

…the war. My mother’s family (which is, immediately speaking, from northern India) is supposedly descended from an Iraqi who left Mesopotamia around 1250. In Indo-Islamic culture, among others, we have shajaras, literally (family) trees. That’s how we know. This fortunate ancestor (being Arab) spoke Arabic, so he found employment in the service of the Delhi Sultans, and the family line was from then on inseparable from Islamic law, arts and letters…

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Is Monsanto Satan? The Pleasure and Problem of Conspiracy Theory

…) I knew Monsanto sues farmers into oblivion, caused a rash of suicides in India, suppresses negative media coverage, and pays politicians, and scientists to lie on its behalf. But there was one story I didn’t believe, because I knew it wasn’t true: Monsanto hadn’t paid me. So I did what any academic or journalist would do, and started learning more about the company that supposedly had me on its payroll. In the process, I discovered that very lit…

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Claude, Adieu: A Farewell to Lévi-Strauss

…Strauss asks, if Alexander’s attempt to unite the Mediterranean world with India had enjoyed more time to germinate? Might this strange synthesis have achieved a more lasting success? Would Christianity or Islam ever have come into being? “It was chiefly the presence of Islam which troubled me,” he tells us, when he comes finally to the Alexandrian site of Taxila. This was in 1955. Ever an astute reader of the visual (he published a lovely little…

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Raelian Swastika Campaign Calculated to Stoke Controversy

…oses. I witnessed another example of “swastika-phobia” on a trip to Kochi, India, once home to a sizable population of Indian Jews, a part of which is still known as “Jew Town.” I overheard an American tourist exclaim with alarm, “I was in Jew Town, and there were swastikas everywhere!” When her friend tried to explain that in Kochi the swastika is a symbol of Hinduism and not Nazism, she responded, “I know, but still!” Because the swastika inspir…

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NY Subway Killing a Case of Blind Hatred?

…when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” A native of India, Mr. Sen had saved enough money to open a small copy shop. While he had no family in the U.S., he had friends and associates who were part of this new life. While he was a Hindu, Sen had a Muslim roommate with whom he frequently discussed matters of belief. And when they did, Mr. Sen expressed his deep disappointment that there was so much violence in the world on acc…

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Is Trying Really Good Enough? ‘The Good Place’ Has a C-word Problem

…named Doug picked a dozen roses for his grandmother, for which he gained a number of points. In 2009, another man named Doug also gave his grandmother a dozen roses, but actually lost points for doing so, precisely because in doing so, he supported global warming and the exploitation of labor on the other side of the world. Follow the money Yet, even though much of the characters’ motivations and the show’s driving argument for reform rests upon t…

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