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“Burka Avenger”: Pakistan’s Middle Class Gets a Feminist Cartoon

By M. Sophia Newman

…mics study (PDF) documented an upswing in gender equality and education in India after the arrival of cable television. “Introducing cable increases the likelihood of current enrollment for girls by 3.5 percentage points,” the authors wrote, describing a shift over four times larger than the 0.83% increase created by the Pakistani government between 2005 and 2011. The show could have the same effect in Pakistan, particularly if public interest sta…

LGBTs in Philippines Reflect on Papal Visit; Francis Meets Trans Man Shunned by Parish; French Group Turns ‘Bar of Sodom’ into ‘Pub of Mercy’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ubject to violence and discrimination in many parts of the world. In 2013, India re-criminalised homosexuality while Nigeria, Uganda, and Gambia have all passed laws that make homosexuality a crime punishable with life imprisonment. In seven countries, homosexuality is punishable by death, the statement said. Philippines: LGBT rights advocates reflect on papal visit We reported last week on the visit by Pope Francis to the Philippines. This week G…

Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

By Gary Dorrien

…is into the government. Most difficult of all, it needs to integrate large numbers of Sunni forces into the army and police force. Above all, it needs to get the U.S. Army out. The Toxic Politics of Collaboration and Betrayal On the latter issue, we need to be resolute and pragmatic at the same time; and by “we,” I mean our religious communities, the movements for social justice, and the Obama Administration. President Obama has significantly comp…

Obama Now a Hindu?

By Gabriel Mckee

…w need to prove he’s not a secret Hindu as well. According to the Times of India, a group of supporters in New Delhi have sent Obama a two-foot, gold-plated statue of the monkey god Hanuman. According to Indian politician Brijmohan Bhama, “Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him.” The apparent source of this pronouncement of Obama’s newly-discovered faith is this photo from Time magazine, wh…

Population Growth Divides Climate Change Advocates

By Brentin Mock

…thoritative reports, the group does acknowledge that regions in Africa and India with extremely dense populations are most at risk to massive suffering. The Catholic Church has studied and worked on issues of protecting the poor from climate change disaster for at least the last ten years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is one of four members of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE), which also includes th…

How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…ovements were emerging in other traditions in other parts of the world. In India, for example, bhakti movements of social rebellion were erupting throughout the subcontinent, eschewing Brahmanical authority for the fellowship of devotees of a new breed of eclectic saints and teachers who could be outcastes, blind, female, or partly Muslim. Elsewhere in Asia, what has been called a “Protestant Buddhism” was appealing to the masses in the way that a…

Is Religion Wrecking Our Air?

By Jay Wexler

…per that showed the effects of fireworks on air pollution during Diwali in India, “fireworks contain harmful chemicals such as potassium nitrate, carbon and sulphur apart from an array of chemicals such as strontium, barium, sodium, titanium, zirconium, magnesium alloys, copper and aluminum powder to create the colourful effects. On burning they release gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.” The study concluded that fireworks contrib…

What a Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist Can Teach Us About Women’s Rights vs. The Religious Right

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…At the same time, one must also recall King’s work on Gandhi, his visit to India, as well as nominating the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. King learned from other traditions and brought them to bear on the Christian tradition he was affiliated with. Matilda Joslyn Gage never left the Baptist church, though she never baptized her children either. She would claim that, True civilization is a recognition of the rights…

Selective Sympathy and the Mumbai Chabad House

By Naomi Seidman

…finally appeared of the couple, performing a wedding a few months ago, in India. They looked like any one of my nieces or nephews, young newlyweds. Rivkah wears a sleek wig that others—not in the know—might mistake for her own hair (when I was growing up, wigs were more obviously wigs). But I knew Chabad, too, from my own travels. Everywhere I went, when I was still Orthodox, I could count on finding a kosher meal, a hospitable family, through th…

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

By Brian McGrath Davis

…e religious, Armstrong explains: Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The Ascent of Intellectual Orthodoxy For most of Western history, religion has been primarily a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. In fact,…